Donald Trump landed this Monday at the New York LaGuardia airport in which he represents one of the hardest trips of his life.
The former president flew to New York from his residence in Florida to surrender this Tuesday to justice, to listen to the charges that the grand jury imputes for the bribery of 130,000 dollars to the porn actress Stormy Damiels and to undergo fingerprinting and other procedures typical of an arrest and prosecution: a bitter pill that, however, and despite being the first criminal accusation against a president of the United States, he tries to turn into a show and a martyrdom with electoral returns: a strategy in which he is having some success, as indicated by the polls and the income of his campaign as a candidate for re-election in the 2024 presidential elections.
Trump took off at noon from the West Palm Beach airport, very close to his Mar-a-Lago residence, to spend the night at his former New York residence in Trump Tower before going to court on Tuesday where, at two and a quarter in the afternoon (a quarter past eight in Barcelona) the judge Juan Merchan and the prosecutor Alvin Bragg await him for the reading of charges.
The Republican leader boarded his private plane – a Boeing 757 nicknamed Trump Force One and labeled with his last name – after traveling to the Florida airport in a caravan of ten vehicles no less spectacular than that of a sitting president. The main televisions broadcast the movements live.
Trump's supporters have called a protest demonstration against his impeachment for tomorrow, in front of the court building. There will be one of the most exalted spokespersons for Trumpism, the deputy Marjorie Taylor Greene, as she announced as soon as the accusation was known. Green has defended the bloody assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, for which she also investigates her idol; if she had depended on her, she said, the ultras would have "won" in their attempt to annul Joe Biden's proclamation as the winner of the elections, among other things because the attack would have been "armed".
Before the judge, Trump will plead "not guilty" to the crimes charged against him, his defense has confirmed. The indictment can exceed 30 counts. According to some leaks, there would be, on the one hand, 33 misdemeanors for forgery, at a rate of three for each of the 11 payments that the then presidential candidate paid to his lawyer Michael Cohen at the end of the 2016 campaign. These disbursements were passed off as professional bills but in reality they were the reimbursement of the 130,000 dollars that the lawyer had delivered on Trump's behalf to Stormy Daniels to silence her. To these minor crimes would be added a serious one ( felony ) referring to the electoral objective of the payments, having been made to avoid a decrease in votes as a result of the revelations that the actress planned to make public about the extramarital affair that she would have had with the magnate. ten years before. The combination of one and the other illegal acts could motivate a sentence of up to four years in prison.
The former president has reinforced his team of lawyers by hiring a prestigious specialist in white-collar crimes, also former federal prosecutor Todd Blanche, who has already shown his effectiveness by representing an ally of the former president, Paul Manafort. Blanche will work hand in hand with Susan Secheles and Joe Tacopina, who has distanced himself from his client's attacks and threats to the prosecutor and the judge.
After the arraignment, Trump will be released and will return home to Florida to deliver a statement that is sure to be the closest thing to a rally. The defendant will influence his repeated complaint of "political persecution" and instrumentalization of justice, arguments that his electoral team is using successfully in his fundraising emails: in the first 48 hours after the announcement of the accusation, the campaign of Trump thus raised 5 million dollars. And polls conducted after the indictment became known also show his lead increasing slightly over his likely strongest rival in the 2024 primary, Florida Gov. Ron de Santis.
Another matter entirely is the effect that this process and those that may come in relation to the assault on the Capitol, the attempts to falsify the elections and the concealment of secret papers in Mar-a-Lago may have on the elections themselves.
Trump's future could not be more uncertain. Neither does the United States.
