The year 2024 promised a judicial ordeal for Donald Trump, who some even saw behind bars for the presidential election on November 5.
In reality, the Republican candidate, who faces 88 charges, will have escaped three of the four sensational trials he feared.
Through appeals and delaying tactics launched by his army of lawyers, and also through stage victories, particularly at the Supreme Court, he was only found guilty in the least serious case, that of concealed accounting in New York.
The last good news for him in this case came on Friday, with the postponement of the announcement of his sentence until November 26.
Here is a now clearer overview of his torments with Justice.
– The 2020 electoral contestation –
Donald Trump is being prosecuted by the federal justice system for illegally trying to reverse the results of the election won by Joe Biden. Special counsel Jack Smith has charged him with “conspiring against American institutions” and “violating the right to vote” of voters.
Although the former Republican president is not directly concerned about the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the prosecutor accuses him of having stirred up “violence and chaos.”
The trial was originally scheduled to begin on March 4 in Washington, with the defendant facing decades in prison.
But that was postponed while the Supreme Court partially ruled in favor of the former president, who claims he benefits from criminal immunity.
Prosecutor Smith then had to revise his indictment and then battle over the calendar with the Republican’s lawyers.
Ultimately, the judge in the case, Tanya Chutkan, noted on Thursday that it was impossible to set a new trial date soon.
– The 2020 Election in Georgia –
Donald Trump is being prosecuted in Georgia for alleged electoral pressure in that state, including a phone call in which he asked a local official to find him 11,000 votes he needed.
Indicted, Donald Trump was forced to appear at an Atlanta jail for a mug shot, a humiliating first for a former US president.
But the prosecution’s progress was seriously hampered when it was revealed that local prosecutor Fani Willis was having an intimate relationship with an investigator she had hired, Nathan Wade.
Added to the request for divestment filed by Donald Trump’s lawyers were the consequences of the Supreme Court’s favorable decision on presidential immunity.
As a result, the opening of the trial, once planned for August 5, has been postponed indefinitely.
– Retention of confidential documents –
In this other federal case, also being prosecuted by prosecutor Jack Smith, Donald Trump is accused of taking top secret documents to his private residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
He is also suspected of attempting to destroy evidence. The most serious charges carry up to 10 years in prison.
The trial in these cases was originally scheduled to begin on May 20. But Donald Trump won a spectacular victory on July 15, when Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the proceedings, citing the illegal appointment of Smith.
The latter seized a federal appeals court at the end of August to get his prosecution back on track. The ball is now in the hands of other magistrates, the procedural battle expected to continue for months.
– The Stormy Daniels case –
This criminal case is the only one of the four to have been the subject of a trial, from mid-April to the end of May in New York.
At the end of the debates, Donald Trump was found guilty by a jury of making concealed payments to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, to avoid a scandal just before the 2016 presidential election.
The billionaire, who has repeatedly denounced political persecution, rejected a trial he considered “rigged”.
Facing up to four years in prison, Donald Trump should have been informed of his sentence in September.
But on Friday, there was a bolt from the blue: assuring that he was acting “in the interests of justice”, Judge Juan Merchan postponed the announcement of the sentence until three weeks after the election, offering an unexpected respite to the Republican leader.
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