Hello Jean from Florida and Vinc',
Declared the winner, Donald Trump intends to find himself sheltered from legal proceedings. A final obstacle nevertheless awaits him on November 26 in New York before his official return to the White House on January 20: the pronouncement of his sentence in the only one of his four criminal trials that his lawyers have not managed to postpone until beyond 2024.
Found guilty on May 30 by the courts of the State of New York of “aggravated accounting falsification to conceal a plot to pervert the 2016 election”he theoretically faces up to four years in prison. This case concerns the payment of $130,000, disguised as legal fees, to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, to silence a sexual relationship in 2006, which Donald Trump denies.
But the hypothesis that Judge Juan Merchan imposes a prison sentence on him, in the case of a first criminal conviction, now appears highly improbable in the face of the insurmountable practical difficulties that the incarceration of an elected president and then current president would raise.
As for the two federal proceedings against him, if Donald Trump's legal horizon brightened spectacularly this summer, it now appears completely clear at least for the four years of his new mandate.
The Republican candidate said at the end of October that he wanted, if elected, “turn in two seconds” the special prosecutor in charge of these two cases, Jack Smith, appointed by the Minister of Justice of the current Democratic administration, Merrick Garland. The two cases investigated by the special prosecutor focus on Donald Trump's allegedly illicit attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his withholding of classified documents after his departure from the White House.
Once again president, Donald Trump could either appoint a new attorney general who would fire Jack Smith, or simply order his Justice Department to drop the charges. Without waiting for the transfer of power, the special prosecutor and the Ministry of Justice began discussions on Wednesday with a view to stopping these proceedings, several American media reported. But the department has adopted a policy for more than fifty years of not prosecuting a sitting president.
There remain the prosecutions in Georgia, where Donald Trump is being prosecuted with 14 other people for facts similar to those in his federal case in Washington, under a law in this key state on organized gang crime. In this case, which has been stalled at least until next year, everything will depend on the decision of the state appeals court, which received a request from the accused to withdraw from the prosecutor's office.
