Dal quotidiano “THE GUARDIAN”: Trump court date sets US on course for election clash

Criminal case over 2020 conspiracy triggers fresh bout of political jousting
David Smith and Martin Pengelly Washington · 3 Ago 2023

Donald Trump will appear in a US court today as a criminal defendant after federal prosecutors indicted the former president in a case that threatens to set up a collision between the justice system and a volatile presidential election in November next year.
In the US’s deeply polarised political culture, Democrats yesterday welcomed the criminal charges for attempting to overturn the 2020 election while Republicans rallied behind their party’s frontrunner for the 2024 contest.
In Trump’s third appearance in a courtroom as a criminal defendant, prosecutors in Washington will outline the four conspiracy and obstruction counts in the case and a magistrate judge, Moxila Upadhyaya, will set bail conditions, weeks after Trump was charged with putting government secrets at risk.
Both sides are likely later to file motions seeking to shape what evidence and legal arguments will be permitted at trial, which could be many months away.
In a possible preview of Trump’s defence, his lawyer, John Lauro, called the indictment “an attack on free speech and political advocacy”, implying that Trump’s lies about election fraud were protected under the constitutional right to freedom of expression.
Lauro told CNN the indictment was “an effort to not only criminalise, but also to censor free speech”.
Many Republicans – elected officials and voters – have unashamedly backed Trump, seeking to portray the charges against him as a politically motivated prosecution and a Democratic plot to derail his re-election campaign.
Trump set the tone on his Truth Social platform: “This unprecedented indictment of a former (highly successful!) president and the leading candidate, by far, in both the Republican party and the 2024 general election, has awoken the world to the corruption, scandal, and failure that has taken place in the United States for the past three years.”
The Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, called the indictment an attempt “to distract from news” about Republican allegations of corruption involving Hunter Biden, the son of
the president, “and attack the frontrunner” to face Joe Biden next year.
The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, Trump’s leading rival for the nomination, said he had not read the indictment but promised to “ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans”, adding: “One of the reasons our country is in decline is the politicisation of the rule of law.”
The charges – brought by the special counsel Jack Smith and filed in federal district court in Washington – are the first related to actions taken by an American president in office.
Trump is accused of “obstructing a bedrock function of the US government – the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election”.
His lies fuelled a deadly riot by supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.
The case has been assigned to the district judge Tanya Chutkan, a former assistant public defender nominated by Barack Obama. She has handed down prison sentences in January 6 riot cases harsher than prosecutors recommended and ruled against Trump in a separate January 6 case, refusing his request to block the release of documents to a House committee investigating the attack.
In a memorable line from her ruling, Chutkan wrote: “Presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president.”
The latest charges mean Trump has been impeached twice, arrested twice and indicted three times: over attempted election subversion, hushmoney payments to a porn actor, and the alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Despite the charges – and the prospect of more, over alleged election subversion in Georgia – Trump leads Republican polling by more than 30 points. Nothing prevents criminal defendants campaigning or taking office if convicted.
Trump had a private dinner with Fox News executives shortly after learning that he would be indicted for a third time, according to the New York Times. The two-hour dinner for Trump, Fox News president, Jay Wallace, and the network’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, was held in a private dining room at the former president’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. The executives lobbied Trump to attend the first Republican presidential primary debate later this month. It will be hosted by Fox News with the Republican national committee in Milwaukee.
Strategists said that while the indictments could help Trump win the Republican nomination, they could prove less helpful in next year’s election, when he will have to win over moderates and independents.
Republican condemnation of Trump was notably rare. Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman, said the presidential run was “driven by an attempt to stay out of prison and scam his supporters into footing his legal bills”. Hurd added: “Furthermore, his denial of the 2020 election results and actions on 6 January show he’s unfit for office.” If Republicans “make the upcoming election about Trump, we are giving Joe Biden another four years in the White House”, he said.
Mike Pence, Trump’s former vicepresident, who refused to bow to pressure not to certify the election results and fled the mob at the Capitol, said the indictment was “an important reminder anyone who puts himself over the constitution should never be president”.
Most Republicans backed the former president. The South Carolina senator Tim Scott claimed that “Biden’s justice department” was “hunting Republicans, while protecting Democrats”. Byron Donalds of Florida, a hard-right Trump ally in the US House, said he was the victim of “selective use of … the federal government” while prosecutors “concoct sweetheart deals for Hunter [Biden], Hillary [Clinton] and the rest of the Democrat darlings”.
Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called the charges “the most significant [Trump] has yet faced because they address the most serious offence he committed: trying to block the peaceful transfer of power and keep himself in office”.