Qfour women and five men in black robes will enter the race for the presidential election in the United States. Donald Trump won the first stage, Monday January 15, in Iowa. On a very cold day in the middle of the Midwest, the New Yorker confirmed his place as the favorite of the Republican family. He intends to wear the colors of the Grand Old Party during the election next November. But, between him and the voters, he will find the judges – and particularly the nine magistrates of the Supreme Court.
Two calendars will merge: that of the legal proceedings of which Trump is the subject and that, classic, of an American political campaign – first, the primaries then, come summer, the confrontation between a Democrat and a Republican. Except that this course is different and even unprecedented this time. The Republican candidate advances with heavy and uncertain steps, weighed down, at a minimum, by three criminal prosecutions: two for attempted subversion of the presidential election of November 2020, one for possession of secret documents.
A triple or quadruple indictment threatens the presidency of the most powerful liberal democracy. A litigant potentially facing a prison sentence is seeking the votes of the American people. A declared crook intends to once again preside over the destiny of the country which ensures leadership of the Western camp.
Some of the trials will begin in March, then, from one courtroom to another, the waltz of legal confrontations will punctuate the stages of the electoral competition. Spring soap opera guaranteed.
Autocratic leanings
No one imagines the impact that a conviction could have on the progress of the campaign or on the vote on November 5, the date of the presidential election. One certainty: familiar with trials, Trump will exhaust the appeal procedures.
One way or another, although we cannot yet predict the consequences, the judges will play a role in this election – whether they convict the former president or not. The judiciary will weigh on politics, which raises a fundamental question. In a democracy, is it up to judges or voters to decide the fate of Donald Trump and, therefore, in part the election? Political-legal psychodrama: should we favor the rule of law or popular suffrage? The United States is the scene of a battle of principle on a key point of democratic functioning.
Declared defeated in November 2020 by all the institutions that had to decide on it, Trump, ego raw and refusing this defeat, sought to stop this strong moment of democracy which is the peaceful transfer of power from a party to the ‘other. He imposed on the Republican Party, which submitted miserably, the thesis of a stolen election. On January 6, 2021, he called on his supporters to ” to walk “ on Congress to prevent – it will be in vain – the certification of the November 2020 vote: ransacking of the premises, six deaths – and, to date, 1,200 people arrested, some sentenced to prison.
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