A televised trial, around 20 defendants, a detailed mapping of the ramifications of alleged election interference and no possible pardon: the indictment of Donald Trump in Georgia is not a routine affair for the ex-president American.
This is the fourth criminal indictment in less than six months for Donald Trump, campaigning for the Republican primary to win back the White House in 2024.
The other three relate to the purchase of the silence of an actress of X movies, in New York, and at the federal level, on her alleged negligence in the management of confidential documents in Florida (southeast) and her alleged fraudulent attempts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election in seven key states.
Although many of the facts referred to can be found in the federal proceedings initiated in Washington by special prosecutor Jack Smith, the use by prosecutor Fani Willis of a Georgia law against organized crime radically changes the situation, due to the number of defendants and the extent of the case.
The indictment against the ex-president in Georgia “is unique in many ways among criminal cases against Trump, but one significant difference is that it involves 19 defendants” in total, notes Erica Hashimoto, professor of law at the Georgetown University in an article published Tuesday on the specialized blog Just Security.
By comparison, he has only two co-defendants in Florida and none officially identified in the other two proceedings, she recalls.
For jurist Norman Eisen, former specialist in ethics within the Obama administration and lawyer Amy Lee Copeland, this indictment “is the first to explore all the depths of the conspiracy (…) on the scale of a State”.
“Georgia has an array of criminal laws tailor-made for the sprawling turpitudes that Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators are accused of committing,” they wrote in a column published by the New York Times.
According to Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, the federal case on alleged election manipulation and the Georgia state case do not oppose but complement each other.
“If Smith’s indictment gives us a broad view of the conspiracy to block the transfer of power in Washington, the Georgia indictment presents a stark examination of the desperate pressures exerted on public officials and ordinary people in the state who tried to do their job”, she explains in a forum.
“While the facts overlap, they are not identical. Taken together, they promise to provide a complete picture of Trump’s actions,” she adds.
When the future trial in Georgia takes place, the date of which remains to be fixed, it should be broadcast on television, unlike federal trials in which this possibility is excluded.
“The trial in Georgia should be the only one that will be possible to follow as it unfolds”, underline Norman Eisen and Amy Lee Copeland, believing that “it only increases the historic nature of the indictment” .
But the real estate magnate, who owes much of his fame to his role as the omnipotent host of a reality TV show, should be allowed to be represented there.
Another notable difference compared to federal justice: even in the event of a presidential victory in 2024, Donald Trump will not be able to obtain the abandonment of the charges by the prosecutor’s office or pardon himself in the event of conviction since the Federal state has no state level authority.
This outcome is all the more closed to him since in Georgia the reductions and adjustments of sentences depend on a body composed of elected representatives of the two parties and since pardons can in principle only be granted there five years after the execution of the penalty.
15/08/2023 20:41:54 – Washington (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
