After two campaign meetings, Donald Trump returned Thursday to his trial in New York for hidden payments in 2016 to a former porn actress, who resumed with a new standoff over his attacks on witnesses and jurors.
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Before the resumption of the proceedings, Judge Juan Merchan examined a new round of unbridled statements from the tempestuous Republican billionaire outside the courtroom, vituperating against one of the key witnesses, his former lawyer turned sworn enemy, Michael Cohen, or against the jurors , whom he called “95% Democrats” to protest their supposed lack of impartiality.
Prosecutors denounced new violations of the ban on any invective against jurors or witnesses, ordered by the magistrate to protect them from possible pressure or intimidation.
Donald Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, once again defended the urgency of protecting the Republican presidential candidate’s freedom of expression. “He answered a question about the trial,” he argued, and “we really believe that this is political persecution, and the fact is that this jurisdiction is 90% Democratic.”
“The implication (of these remarks) is that the jury is not fair,” the judge said.
The question has become burning, because the magistrate already sentenced Donald Trump on Tuesday for contempt, to the maximum fine, i.e. $9,000 for nine publications on his Truth Social network or his campaign site. Above all, he warned the former President of the United States that he was ready to incarcerate him so that he would stop his attacks, the law providing for up to 30 days in prison.
He did not immediately rule.
Arriving at the hearing, Donald Trump, gold tie and navy blue suit, congratulated himself on having been able to campaign the day before “without being at this ridiculous show trial”, which he “calls the Biden trial” to denounce the supposed involvement of his rival in his legal troubles.
“Extortion”
Donald Trump risks in this case the first criminal conviction of a former American president and in theory a prison sentence, a scenario which would tip the presidential campaign into the unknown.
The former President of the United States is being prosecuted for 34 falsifications of accounting documents which allegedly served to conceal a payment to cover up a potential sex scandal in the home stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign, won narrowly against Hillary Clinton.
A sum of $130,000 was paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, to buy her silence about a sexual relationship she claimed to have had with him in 2006, when he was already married. A relationship that Donald Trump denies.
The actress’s former lawyer, Keith Davidson, continued to testify Thursday behind the scenes of this transaction, carried out directly with Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen.
He detailed the steps which led to the signing of a confidentiality contract, on October 28, 2016, a few days before the election, under the pseudonyms of “Peggy Peterson” for Stormy Daniels, and “David Dennison” for Donald Trump. .
The money, initially taken from Michael Cohen’s personal funds, was paid via a shell company. According to the prosecution, Mr. Cohen was reimbursed in 2017 by Donald Trump’s business group, the Trump Organization, for expenses recorded as “legal expenses”, hence the prosecution for falsification of accounting documents.
Keith Davidson was then pushed to the ropes by Donald Trump’s lawyer, Emil Bove, who compared his activities to “extortion”. The lawyer had to concede that he had been the subject of a federal investigation after having negotiated the sale of a “sex tape” to former wrestling star Hulk Hogan.
Michael Cohen, a key prosecution witness, has yet to testify before jurors.
Three years after leaving the White House in chaos, and having recovered from two impeachment proceedings, Donald Trump enters the campaign being indicted in four different cases, including that before the federal courts in Washington for his alleged illegal attempts to reverse the results of the presidential election won by Joe Biden in 2020.
But due to appeals and procedural questions, the current trial in New York, of a smaller scale, could be the only one tried before the November 5 election.
