Donald Trump and his court cases. What impact will this have on the election?
The former president's guilty plea in the Stormy Daniels case has already been dubbed a "triumph of American justice" that demonstrated that "no one is above the law".
Almost four years ago, when Donald Trump's defeat in the US presidential election became apparent, American journalists and lawyers began to wonder: would the 45th US president ever face trial?
No former US president has ever been tried on criminal charges; the most they could do was to be impeached in Congress (and only one of four such cases was successful).
But on April 15, Trump set a precedent when he appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, where he is accused of falsifying business records to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Trump is facing four criminal cases of varying complexity and with different legal perspectives.
Each of them, unprecedented in itself, can both bury the former president's chances for re-election and, on the contrary, increase his popularity among his supporters.
In addition, it could lead to a violation of the unspoken taboo against criminal prosecution of former US presidents in the future.
In Manhattan Criminal Court (New York), 12 jurors unanimously found the leading US presidential candidate Donald Trump guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying documents to conceal payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels. The punishment will be imposed on July 11 during a separate hearing.
According to the prosecution, in 2006, Donald Trump had an intimate relationship with porn actress Stormy Daniels, and shortly before the 2016 presidential election, his lawyer Michael Cohen paid the woman $130,000 to keep quiet. After being elected President of the United States, Trump reimbursed Cohen for the money, presenting it as payment for legal services (the total amount of the 11 checks he signed was $420,000). The prosecutor's office considers this a falsification.
The court hearings in the Stormy Daniels case began on April 15. Over the course of 20 days of hearings, 22 witnesses took the stand, including Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen, who provided key incriminating testimony against Trump.
The former president's lawyers tried to portray Cohen as "the biggest liar of all time" and noted that he had been previously charged with perjury. Donald Trump claims that he has never had a personal relationship with Stormy Daniels, and he called the jury's decision a "sham" and a "black day in American history".
The Stormy Daniels case was considered the least important of the four criminal cases brought against Trump. The prosecutors in this case managed to reach a verdict (and sentence, on July 11) before the November 5, 2024 presidential election. Trials in other cases have been postponed. Trump is suspected of negligence with classified documents, involvement in the January 2021 storming of the Capitol, and business-related violations.
Court and Elections
Experts call the former president's guilty verdict in the Stormy Daniels case a "triumph of American justice" that confirms the principle that "no one is above the law". The court on July 11 may impose a large fine, house arrest, suspended or real prison sentence on him. However, even such a verdict would not prevent Trump from campaigning or running for office-even if he were to be imprisoned. In addition, according to exit polls, the court verdict has little effect on voters' opinions of Trump".
"We have a strange situation where a felony conviction is likely to change little in the political dimension", says Eric Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan. — "It would hurt Trump more if someone posted a video on TikTok of him kicking a cat".
According to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted on May 21-23, 67% of Americans said the guilty verdict would not affect their decision to vote or not vote for Trump in the July 5, 2024 election. At the same time, 25% of Republicans and 15% of independent voters said they would be even more likely to vote for Trump if the jury found him guilty. Only 10% of Republicans and 11% of independents admitted that their desire to vote would decrease in this case.
"While being accused of a criminal offense is bad, American voters in the fall will not be concerned about this, but about other issues such as inflation, the border with Mexico, competition with China and Russia, and international aid to Israel and Ukraine", the BBC quoted American sociologist Douglas Schoen as saying.
Could the litigation play into Joe Biden's hands?
According to Five Thirty Eight, a poll aggregator that is part of ABC News, Trump is ahead of Biden by 1.7 percentage points — 41.2 percent vs. 39.5 percent — in the sham election. Independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. receives 9.8% of the vote. Sarah Longwell, founder of Republicans Against Trump, believes that Trump's guilty plea could help Biden overcome this small gap and take the lead in the presidential race. To achieve this goal, she said, it is important to pull voters who dislike both candidates away from Trump. The winner in the US is the opportunity to focus on Trump's characteristics and the consequences of his possible second presidential term.
As for politicians, Politico reports that some Biden supporters, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, are refraining from politicizing the first-ever conviction of a former president of a criminal offense.
"I'm proud that our legal system is working", Politico quoted Elizabeth Warren as saying. "But this is not a time for pride for our country when the president-elect is found guilty of 34 counts. It's a sad day for our nation".
"There are two sides, one that antagonizes and hates Trump..... and the other supporting him. Each of them has its own motives. So Trump is feeding the feelings of voters on both sides. This will obviously make the elections in November more interesting", Peter Dutton, an Australian politician and leader of the Liberal Party, commented on the situation in the United States.
Reuters reports that the May 30 verdict is seen by many of Trump's supporters as proof that the U.S. political system has lost its fairness and only drastic measures can save the country. Web resources such as Patriots.win are marked by calls for violence, as well as calls to attack judges, start a civil war or even seize power with guns.
Threats of violence and aggressive rhetoric in the US have been on the rise since Trump lost the 2020 election and made unsubstantiated claims in court that the victory was "stolen from the patriots". This led to the storming of the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021, which left four people dead and more than 50 law enforcement officers with varying degrees of injuries.
