Since November 3, 2020, when Donald Trump lost the election, he has been facing legal proceedings of one type or the other. Through his cunning moves and exploiting procedural lacunas to his favor he has been successful to delay any meaningful action against him; however now he seems to be caught-up. After his indictment on March 30, in a case of ‘hush-money’ payment to a porn star during the 2016 election campaign, he has attained a unique status in the American history: the first ex-president to face criminal charges. Apart from this one, a variety of allegations are at various stages of investigation and some of them are serious enough to damage his politics and business crucially. To have a glance of the most important cases will be informative as well as helpful in ascertaining their likely influence on upcoming developments.
The first case which has reached to the stage of trial is based upon the charge that he had sex with Stormy Denials, a famous adult-star of yesteryears. Latter-on, during the presidential campaign of 2016, Trump paid her $130, 000 through his lawyer Michael Cohen to remain silent. However, Trump has characterized the case as ‘political persecution’ and alleged that the Chief Investigator Alvin Bragg has distorted the probe and misreported. This case is built-up on a concrete real and circumstantial evidence therefore it is likely to be quite trouble-some for Trump. Another case of paying ‘hush-money’ to model Karen McDougal for involvement with Trump is also in the pipe-line. Simultaneously, the business practices of Trump family have also been brought into question. One of his companies called ‘Trump Organization’ has already been fined $106 million and the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) has been awarded five months imprisonment for tampering and falsifying the company records. The matter was probed at the level of New York’s Attorney General Letitia James and it took years to unearth the details. Parallel to it, a lawsuit has also been in progress for inflating Trump’s net worth by billions and seeking $250 million allegedly acquired through illegitimate means. Trump has consistently been striving to get the proceedings delayed by one way or the other.
A consequential case which made headlines during last two years relates to shifting of official documents from the White House to Trump family’s estate at Florida named ‘Mar-a Lago’ at the end of his presidential term. The investigation took a stunning turn when in August 2022 the authorities were able to discover 11,000 documents, out of which as many as 100 were either classified or top- secret. The sensitivity of these files can be gauged from the fact that their particulars were not made public as that could harm America’s security. The ex-president has failed to come-up with any convincing argument and offered ‘shifting defenses’ mostly claiming that he had declassified the material; however he has not provided any proof to substantiate his stance. The Justice department claims that it was a clear-cut violation of the ‘Espionage Act’. The case of Trump’s alleged role in the attack on Washington’s official infrastructure dated January, 2021 to forestall the confirmation of Joe Biden’s election victory has also been under investigation for almost two years and can lead to Trump’s trial for inciting insurrection.
During the investigation and then prior to indictment, Trump has banked upon his ‘time-honored Trumpian strategy: delay’. Now by dragging the investigations of immature and trial of mature cases, he will try to push the matter into 2024 presidential campaign and politicize it as much as possible. History shows that he has decades-long experience of prolonging his legal contests and he has kept-on refining his tactics with the passage of times. Joseph Gerstein and Kyle Cheney’s analysis of the situation in ‘POLITICO’ dated April 1 is quite compelling. According to them; ‘among the moves that could chew-up the time are: an attempt to dismiss the entire case, a bid to relocate his trial outside of New York city, an effort to disqualify the prosecutor or the judge in his case, a bid to move the case from state to federal court, extensive negotiations over security protocols for his appearances in court and a motion to reduce his charges from felonies to misdemeanors’. Buying the time would be the most-preferred option for Trump due to a constitutional ambiguity that would come to light if he is re-elected president in the 2024 elections. In that case ‘the need to serve in office would over-ride the consequences of a conviction including any prison sentence’. Actually, the American constitution does not require the president to be ‘free from indictment, conviction or prison: it follows that a person under indictment or in prison may run for the office and even serve as president’. Nonetheless, the political observers raise the question of ‘morality’ as well as his compromised position to perform his functions confidently. Bertrall Ross, a U.S. authority on law and politics has viewed that ‘if Donald Trump is successful at persuading a significant segment of the American people that his indictment and the subsequent legal process is a partisan witch-hunt, then the result could be the politicization of the rule of law in the United States, with dangerous consequences’. In response, Trump has repeatedly called his opponents as ‘Thugs and Radical Left Monsters’. On his social media site, just few days ago, he wrote that ‘this is an attack on our country, the likes of which has never been before’. He also claims that start of trial in Stormy Denials-related case on April 4 is ‘an abuse befitting a banana republic’ and his son Eric Trump describes it as ‘a Third World prosecutorial misconduct’. Nonetheless whatever Trump and his well-wishers may claim the fact is that the ‘perceived invincibility’ of ‘Teflon Don’ has come to an end. Meanwhile, Trump ‘remains to be the undisputed front-runner for the Republican nomination’ and his standing among the voters has not been affected despite ‘wide-spread reporting’ of allegations against him. His fundraising skyrocketed within 24 hours of his indictment touching the figure of $4 million which broke his own previous record. It was noticeable that more than 25% of donations were made by the first-time donors. The imbroglio is likely to persist for quite a reasonable time to come.
The last word: Trump’s popularity has not faltered despite intensified legal actions and his opponents need to take stock of their strategy.
