The parade of witnesses resumes Tuesday in New York at the trial of Donald Trump for hidden payments to a former porn star, where the former President of the United States also sees the threat of a conviction for contempt after his invectives on the sidelines debates.
After a long weekend, the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election is back in Manhattan court for his third week of appearance in this trial scheduled to last six to eight.
The first former president in the history of the United States to be tried criminally, Donald Trump, 77, risks a conviction and, in theory, up to a prison sentence in this case, one of four in which he is indicted.
It is also probably the only one before the November 5 election, during which he dreams of revenge on Joe Biden, after his departure from the White House in January 2021 in chaos.
Donald Trump is being prosecuted for 34 falsifications of accounting documents which were allegedly used to conceal a payment to cover up a potential sex scandal in the home stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign.
The $130,000 was paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about a sexual relationship she claimed to have had with him in 2006, when he was already married to his wife Melania. A relationship he denies. The prosecution speaks of a “plot” to “falsify” the election, when Donald Trump’s defense sees it as the normal functioning of democracy.
As with his other legal troubles, Donald Trump denounces “a witch hunt” and a trial which forces him to appear in a “frozen” courtroom rather than campaigning.
Empty shell
After a first week devoted to jury selection, the debates focused for four days on the lengthy testimony of a former tabloid boss, who set the scene for the case. David Pecker, who owned “The National Enquirer,” described how he helped Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016 by purchasing exclusive rights to two other potentially scandal-provoking testimonies.
All after a meeting in the summer of 2015 with Donald Trump and his former lawyer Michael Cohen. But David Pecker, who had not been reimbursed, refused to pay Stormy Daniels when her case arose.
On Tuesday, the hearings are expected to resume with testimony from Michael Cohen’s former banker. He has already started saying that his client asked him to open an account for a new company, in fact an empty shell which was used to pay Stormy Daniels.
The lawyer was then reimbursed, in 2017, by Donald Trump’s group of companies, the Trump Organization, for expenses recorded as “legal expenses”, hence the prosecution for accounting falsifications.
40 potential witnesses
At the start of the trial, Judge Juan Merchan listed the names of around forty potential witnesses, including Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, but also one of Donald Trump’s former political strategists, Steve Bannon. , or his former communications director at the White House, Hope Hicks.
Prosecutors are refusing to reveal the witnesses in advance, arguing that Donald Trump is seeking to intimidate them and jurors through his posts on his Truth Social network. Last week, they already asked the judge to sentence him for contempt to a fine of $1,000 per incriminated publication, the maximum, and to remind him that incarceration remains “an option if necessary.”
Even before the judge ruled, prosecutors raised three new attacks from Donald Trump, including one on the jurors, whom he described as “95% Democrats” to imply that they would not be impartial. A new hearing will be devoted to this point on Thursday on the sidelines of the debates.
