Former President Donald Trump at the Manhattan Courthouse, April 4, 2023 (POOL/Seth WENIG)
Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to falsification of accounting records in a New York court on Tuesday in a historic criminal hearing that has stirred passions in America and paved the way for a trial in less than a year.
Left free without judicial control, the 76-year-old former president will try everything to avoid the test of a trial in January 2024, only a few months before the presidential election in which he is a candidate.
The Republican, the first American president to suffer such a fate, is targeted by 34 counts. He is accused of ‘orchestrating’ a series of payments to cover up three embarrassing cases ahead of the 2016 election.
Donald Trump has “stopped lying”, criticized New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg, denouncing the “serious criminal conduct” of the New York billionaire. “The law is the same for everyone,” he insisted at a press conference.
A lawyer for Donald Trump, Todd Blanche, has promised to fight a “sad” “ready-made” indictment. According to him, Donald Trump is “frustrated”, “upset” but “determined”.
In the crowded courtroom of the court, the former tenant of the White House showed himself with a closed face, a stern look.
He spent about two hours in the Manhattan courthouse.
– Meet at Mar-a-Lago –
Donald Trump at the Manhattan Courthouse, April 4, 2023 (AFP / Ed JONES)
The septuagenarian then flew from New York aboard his personal plane to Florida, from where he will give a press conference from his residence in Mar-a-Lago, at 8:15 p.m. (00:15 GMT Wednesday), in front of his faithful. and its tens of millions of voters.
Surrounded by bodyguards, the ex-tenant of the White House who aims to return there in 2024, arrived and left the courthouse in a convoy under very high security, flown over by American media helicopters.
In front of the courthouse, handfuls of activists for and against Trump, sometimes colorful, were separated from the first invectives – the authorities being concerned that this tense situation, already at the heart of exceptional media coverage, does not degenerate not.
His detractors had unfurled a huge banner “Trump lies all the time”.
Opponents of former US President Donald Trump in New York on April 4, 2023 (AFP/Leonardo Munoz)
The billionaire claims his innocence and claims to be the victim of a “witch hunt” orchestrated by the Democrats of President Joe Biden, who allegedly “stole” his victory in the 2020 presidential election.
The Democrat said that this appearance was “not a priority” for him, according to White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre.
New Yorker by birth, Donald Trump had to submit, in court, to the ritual imposed on any defendant: to state his name, age and profession, to take a fingerprint. On the other hand, he probably escaped the famous “mugshot” – the taking of the mugshot, the source of so much public humiliation for stars in the United States.
The charges relate to accounting fraud in legal payments intended to cover up three embarrassing cases ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
A Trump Tower doorman, who claimed to have information about a child out of wedlock, was awarded $30,000 to remain silent; a woman who posed as a former mistress received 150,000 dollars to be discreet; and finally a pornographic actress received 130,000 dollars to conceal an alleged extramarital relationship, detailed prosecutor Alvin Bragg in a press release.
– Election violation? –
A Donald Trump supporter waves a “Trump or die” flag outside the Manhattan courthouse on April 4, 2023 (AFP/ANGELA WEISS)
Stormy Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, this woman who has been working with the justice system for five years, was supposed to conceal a supposed and very brief extramarital relationship in 2006 with Donald Trump, which he denies.
Police officers in court in Manhattan on April 4, 2023 in New York ( AFP / ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS )
The $130,000 she received from a former lawyer and handyman for the former president, Michael Cohen — who served time in prison and turned against his boss in 2018 — had no been declared in the campaign accounts of the 2016 presidential candidate Trump.
A possible violation of New York State electoral laws: this sum had been registered, potentially illegally, as “legal fees” in the accounts of his company Trump Organization, already condemned in December and January to a civil fine of 1 $.6 million for fraud.
Beyond this affair, Donald Trump, who has been indicted twice by Congress, is the subject of several other investigations, in particular on his role in the attack on the Capitol, his management of the presidential archives or the pressure exerted about election officials in Georgia.
