Note: The contents of this article are based on the current available information up to May 4, 2024. Between the writing of this article and its publication, Trump’s trial was unexpectedly drawn to a close—he was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records and is using the conviction as campaign fuel; it is unlikely to affect his chances at re-election.
Trigger warning: this article uses the terms sexual assault and rape.
As of May 2024, Donald J. Trump, the former president of the United States, has been charged with 88 felony charges. He has pleaded not guilty to all of them. Though the billionaire has always been a controversial figure, this particular legal fiasco he is entangled in has been particularly contentious. So what’s going on, and why should you probably care?
Since April 15th, Trump has been on trial in New York for 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment from voters in the 2016 election—specifically, he is accused of trying to hide a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who allegedly had sex with Trump. The actual details are a bit more convoluted—technically, he paid his lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, to pay Daniels, and then hid the records—but the spirit of the case, which is expected to finish before the upcoming 2024 election, focuses on that transaction.
According to prosecutors, Trump, not wanting their relationship to damage his chances of winning the election against Hilary Clinton, told Daniels to keep their affair a secret, going so far as to even forge her signature. Trump is vehemently denying Daniels' assertion that they had sex in 2006.
The most recent piece of evidence revealed at the trial was an email containing a recording of Trump boasting about grabbing womens’ genitals without permission in 2016 and accounts of his associates saying they needed to “deny, deny, deny” the recording. The video is being used to prove that Trump and his staff would be likely to lie about his (lack of) interaction with Daniels, given his history of similar behavior. Because the case is still currently ongoing, it is challenging to predict what the outcome will be exactly. Regardless, even if Trump is found not-guilty by the impressively diverse jury, he still has a plethora of other battles to go through.
Following the hush money trial, Trump is set to have three more trials: one in both Washington DC and Georgia for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and one in Florida for mishandling classified materials after leaving the White House and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them. It will likely take years to complete all three, especially because Trump’s legal team is fighting hard to delay them.
Perhaps the most concerning part is that even if Trump is found guilty, he can still run for president. The US Constitution does not require candidates to have a clean criminal record; although ironically, federal convicts cannot vote in elections. Trump is even expected to win the 2024 presidential bid (for more information, read this Sentinel Sun article!). Importantly, if he wins, that likely means the other trials will be postponed for even longer, because presidents cannot be prosecuted for crimes. He would have to finish his second term to be held accountable, although Congress could also impeach him to remove him from office—a strategy that probably also wouldn’t work, given that he was impeached twice already during his first term (the first US president to have been impeached twice) and was acquitted by the Senate both times.
What does this mean for the rest of the world? If Trump were to be elected president—which would give him presidential immunity and only further delay the trials—it would spell disaster for the countless victims already disheartened by the inefficacy of the justice system, and display the terrifying extent to which the leader of arguably the most powerful nation in the world can avoid accountability. In Canada, we are fortunate that prime ministers and elected officials are not exempt from prosecution under the law, but as the next-door-neighbor of the US, still ought to keep a close eye on their activities.
Unfortunately, the current charges against Trump aren’t anything new: even during the 2016 election, there were women who spoke up claiming he sexually assaulted them, and even as of last year, cases brought up against him for rape and sexual assault. It’s up to American voters to decide if they want to keep Biden, an 81 year old who couldn't remember when his son died, or vote in Trump, a man charged with more crimes than states in the US.
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