This week, Judge Juan M. Merchan set April 15 as the date to begin the trial against the former president in New York, in the middle of the electoral campaign, for an alleged payment with which he had tried to silence the porn star Stormy. Daniel for an alleged extramarital relationship, which the former president has denied. This begins the first trial against a former president, an unprecedented event in American history.
Judge Merchan, a frequent donor to the Democratic cause including President Joe Biden's campaign and a group dedicated to “resisting Donald Trump,” according to a report in The New York Post, also issued a gag order against the former resident of the White House and current presidential candidate for the Republican Party.
“It is illegal, un-American and unconstitutional,” Trump said after hearing the decision, adding that the judge “is illegally trying to deprive me of my right under the First Amendment to speak out against the politicization of justice.”
Republican political analyst Frank Rodríguez said that the trial scheduled for April 15 requires Trump's presence in all sessions, as established by New York law, but he estimates that this will not work against the former president.
“For another person that would be bad news because he would not have time to run his political campaign, but not in the case of Trump who is such a well-known man. All the cameras are going to follow him and it is of all the causes that are most likely to not progress and be declared innocent. He is accused of giving money to a woman to keep quiet and that this represents an illegal contribution to his political campaign (before the 2016 elections), it is a crazy case,” Rodriguez pointed out.
Regarding the gag order regarding the case, Rodríguez said that Trump always finds a way to express himself and say “in general terms, that justice is persecuting him for political reasons even without referring directly to his case.”
The other five trials
The former president faces five other legal proceedings: In August 2023, 15 months before the 2024 elections, he was accused of “illicit attempt” to supposedly reverse the result of the 2020 elections. This is the case for the assault to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, which for now has been postponed pending the Supreme Court ruling on the immunity of Trump, who at that time was still the president of the United States.
Another of the processes is that of classified documents, in which he is accused of “compromising national security” for taking documents. He was accused in June 2023 and faces 41 charges in total. Former Vice President Mike Pence and President Joe Biden were also investigated on this same topic, for whom the FBI found secret documents. In Biden's case, the documents were in his possession since he was a senator and later during his vice presidency under the administration of Barack Obama.
The classified documents were found in 4 different places. But Pence and Biden have not been prosecuted by the Justice Department led by Merrick Garland, appointed by Biden and a former official during the administration of Barack Obama and Biden.
The special prosecutor in the case ruled out imposing criminal charges on Biden, arguing that he is “an old man with a bad memory.”
Another of the judicial processes is that of “illicit attempts†to reverse the result of the election in Georgia. The formal accusation was filed in August 2023.
Accused of alleged financial fraud, Trump was sentenced on February 16 to a fine of $355 million and a three-year ban on running companies in the state of New York for financial fraud in his real estate empire; In addition, the payment of more than 100 million dollars in accumulated interest. The Court of Appeals of the state of New York reduced the amount of the bail to 175 million dollars that Trump had to deposit on Monday the 25th. From that date, he was granted ten more days to deposit the new bail. The president appeals for that sentence.
And another of the causes is for “sexual assault†which, according to the alleged victim, Jean Carroll, would have occurred in the 90s, in the last century in a store, a case for which Trump was sentenced in New York to pay 83.3 million dollars.
Prosecutors scandal
For analyst Rodríguez, Trump has had partial victories, “they removed the special prosecutor from the case in Georgia, Nathan Wade, they dropped some of the charges, which will make it easier for him to defend himself.
A court in Georgia was forced to examine for weeks a possible “conflict of interest†by prosecutor Fani Willis, in charge of the case, because she maintained an intimate relationship with Wade, the special prosecutor she appointed and whom she would have paid more. s of $600,000, money from which Willis allegedly benefited. Wade had to resign following a judge's ruling ordering Willis to withdraw from it, or otherwise, Wade's removal.
“The judge's reputation has been diminished, it is definitely something positive, and the biggest victory is the reduction of the ridiculous charges that were costing them 112,000 dollars a day in interest and they have finally reduced it to 175 million which continues being astronomical, but Trump became a billionaire overnight after the debut of his social network Truth Social on the stock market and already has more than 4 billion additional dollars. When they asked him if he was going to sell one of his properties to pay the bail, he responded that it would be “cash,” explains Rodríguez.
Pursuit
The Republican analyst maintains that the (political) persecution against Trump is evident and aims to eliminate him politically and economically to prevent him from governing the country again. In his opinion, that is clearer than water. “What a coincidence that these large torpedoes appear that could have done it two or three years ago, but they did it at times during the campaign, a way to discredit him,†he stated.
Another of their arguments is that they are “very far-fetched accusations that make you understand that they had to dig around to see where they could find a crime.” What must exist in a just society is to determine if there is a crime, then the culprit is sought and not the other way around as has happened, here we see the enormous weight of the State trying to crush not only Trump but his children “, take away their license in the state of New York, completely ruin them economically and politically for daring to oppose the democratic establishment that had been ruling the country.”
And, according to the analyst, the reason for the persecution is Trump's nomination. “Not a single case would have happened if they had not applied, they would be happy because they could manipulate things to their convenience.â€
Support from Obama and Clinton
One of the concerns for Democrats is the polls that give Trump an advantage over Biden. Added to this is the candidacy of Robert Kennedy Jr. as an independent candidate, who, according to analysts, could take votes from the Democrats in the presidential elections.
Biden, who is running for re-election, is the president with one of the lowest general approval ratings, only 38% of Americans approve of him, for this reason former Democratic leaders Barack Obama and Bill Clinton , they join in supporting Biden to boost his campaign.
“They are Democrats and the one who is behind the scenes doing most of the Government is Obama, he is moving rapidly to try to save Biden's candidacy and they are moving on all fronts, their speech is that Trump is a dictator even though he has only been in the Government for 4 years, while Biden has been in the White House for 12 years, first with Obama, who has pushed his campaign,” Rodríguez noted.
Among Biden's weaknesses are the growing illegal migration on the southern border, his advanced age, the state of the economy and the wars in which the US invests financial resources. For Rodriguez, Trump did very well in the international area and also in the domestic area, despite the pandemic in the last stage of his administration. While two wars have been brewing in the Biden government, the catastrophic exit from Afghanistan and an unfortunate policy in Latin America with the dictatorships in the region. “And things have gone very badly in the domestic area,†he emphasizes.
The threat
RodrÃguez considers that he has many possibilities, but considers that there is a threat that they will appear “with new tricks, with a dirty wing that prevent Trump from becoming president, one of which would be to put him behind bars; There is no guarantee that Trump will reach the White House simply by being elected, these people can come up with many things along the way. The surveys also say it.
Institutionality at risk
“It is no longer at risk, it is already damaged,†the analyst states with aplomb.
“In the last elections the Republic was lost, these people have placed their people in key positions in the Armed Forces, in corporations, in universities and in the media and in all institutions, they have perverted all morality of the United States, the good customs, the sacred institutions that balanced between one power and the other, and the FBI, the CIA and the Department of Justice have dedicated themselves to persecuting conservatives and getting Democrats out of trouble. The clearest example is that Trump is accused of having had documents from the presidency, while Biden, who was vice president and former senator, had secret documents in his possession to tell the writer of his book all the secrets of the country, but There is absolutely nothing wrong with a ridiculous excuse that he is an old man who doesn't have a good memory.
However, this alarming measurement does not seem to affect Biden running for re-election.
Meanwhile, Trump, who is facing trials in the middle of the election campaign, claims that “they are rigged cases, all coordinated by the White House and the Department of Justice for the purposes of electoral interference.” “There is no crime. Our country is corrupt,” he says.
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