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The former US president’s next hearing will be on December 4. He walked free from court without any judicial review.
Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to falsification of accounting records in a New York court on Tuesday in a historic criminal hearing that has stirred passions in America and paved the way for a trial in less than a year. Left free without judicial control, the 76-year-old former president will try everything to avoid the test of a trial in January 2024, only a few months before the presidential election in which he is a candidate. The Republican, the first American president to suffer such a fate, is targeted by 34 counts. He is accused of having “orchestra” a series of payments to cover up three embarrassing cases ahead of the 2016 election.
“Serious tortious conduct”
Donald Trump has no “stopped lying”criticized New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg, denouncing the “gross tortious conduct” of the New York billionaire. “The law is the same for all”, he insisted during a press conference. A lawyer for Donald Trump, Todd Blanche, has promised to fight a “sad” charge “all done”. According to him, Donald Trump is “frustrated”, “upset” but “determined”. In the crowded courtroom of the court, the former tenant of the White House showed himself with a closed face, a stern look. He spent about two hours in the Manhattan courthouse.
The septuagenarian then flew from New York aboard his personal plane to Florida, from where he will give a press conference from his residence in Mar-a-Lago, at 8:15 p.m. (0015 GMT Wednesday), in front of his faithful. and its tens of millions of voters. Surrounded by bodyguards, the ex-tenant of the White House who aims to return there in 2024, arrived and left the courthouse in a convoy under very high security, flown over by American media helicopters. In front of the courthouse, handfuls of activists for and against Trump, sometimes colorful, were separated from the first invectives – the authorities being concerned that this tense situation, already at the heart of exceptional media coverage, does not degenerate . His detractors had unfurled a huge banner “Trump lies all the time”.
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The billionaire proclaims his innocence and claims to be the victim of a “witch hunt” orchestrated by the Democrats of President Joe Biden, who would have “stolen” his victory in the presidential election of 2020. The Democrat made it known that this appearance was not “not a priority” for him, according to White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre. New Yorker by birth, Donald Trump had to submit, in court, to the ritual imposed on any defendant: to state his name, age and profession, to take a fingerprint. On the other hand, he probably escaped the famous “mugshot” – the taking of the mugshot, the source of so much public humiliation for stars in the United States.
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Election Violation?
The charges relate to accounting fraud in legal payments intended to cover up three embarrassing cases before the 2016 presidential election. dollars to keep silent; a woman who posed as a former mistress received 150,000 dollars to be discreet; and finally a pornographic actress received 130,000 dollars to conceal an alleged extramarital relationship, detailed prosecutor Alvin Bragg in a press release.
Stormy Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, this woman who has been working with the justice system for five years, was supposed to conceal a supposed and very brief extramarital relationship in 2006 with Donald Trump, which he denies. The $130,000 she received from a former lawyer and handyman for the former president, Michael Cohen — who served time in prison and turned against his boss in 2018 — had no been declared in the campaign accounts of the 2016 presidential candidate Trump.
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A possible violation of New York State electoral laws: this sum had been recorded, potentially illegally, as “legal fees” in the accounts of his company Trump Organization, already condemned in December and January to a civil fine of 1 $.6 million for fraud. Beyond this case, Donald Trump, who has been impeached twice by Congress, is the subject of several other investigations, in particular on his role in the attack on the Capitol, his management of the presidential archives or the pressure exerted about election officials in Georgia.