Many of you have been asking us this question since yesterday (and even since the opening of this live, a month ago). Here are our answers.
Declared the winner, Donald Trump intends to be protected from judicial proceedings. However, one last obstacle 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 were unable to postpone until later. beyond 2024.
Found guilty of 34 crimes by the New York State justice system “Acgravated accounting falsification to conceal a plot to pervert the 2016 elections”In theory he faces up to four years in prison. This case concerns the payment of $130,000, disguised as legal fees, to porn actress Stormy Daniels to silence a sexual relationship in 2006, which Donald Trump denies.
But the hypothesis that the judge would impose a prison sentence, in the case of a first criminal conviction, today seems very unlikely in the face of the insurmountable practical difficulties that the imprisonment of an elected president and then of the current president would pose.
As for the two federal proceedings against him, Donald Trump could legally order that the proceedings against him be ended as soon as he takes office in January 2025.
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The Republican candidate said at the end of October that he wanted, if elected, “turns in two seconds” the special prosecutor in charge of these two cases, Jack Smith, which 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 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 powers, the special prosecutor and the Ministry of Justice began talks on Wednesday with a view to stopping this procedure, several US media reported. But the department has adopted a policy for more than fifty years of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Prosecutions remain in Georgia, where Donald Trump is being prosecuted along 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. Even re-elected, he cannot pardon himself or get the charges dropped in this case.
