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Donald Trump indictment: 'in the short term, it's an obvious political gain for him'

Former U.S. President Donald Trump in Tulsa, central Oklahoma, March 18, 2023. © Sue Ogrocki / AP

Text by: Christophe Paget Follow

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Donald Trump will be served this Tuesday, April 4 his indictment in the case of bribes he would have paid to the former pornographic actress Stormy Daniels to buy his silence, while he was a presidential candidate. Interview with Corentin Sellin, historian specializing in the United States.

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This is a first in the history of the United States: an ex-president indicted. The ex-president has arrived in New York, where he is preparing to appear in a Manhattan court. Donald Trump still seems combative, despite this indictment and the many investigations that target him. He claimed Friday to have raised $ 4 million in 24 hours, in the wake of his indictment, to finance his campaign for the presidential election of 2024.

RFI: Can this indictment, instead of being the problem for Donald Trump, serve him politically?

Corentin Sellin: For now, and in the short term, this is an obvious political gain for Donald Trump. We have seen it since the announcement of the indictment on March 31: all Republicans, including those who have positioned themselves in the alternative to Trump, all his rivals, including the most serious of them the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, all these have flown in support of Donald Trump against an indictment presented as an act of politics and not judicial – under penalty of appearing as bad Republicans. They have no choice, because clearly, Republican voters are unanimously convinced that Donald Trump is suffering political persecution.

Could Donald Trump drag out the trial in this case so that it arrives in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign?

Obviously, this could be a hypothesis, this is not what we are heading towards, because Donald Trump's lawyers have clearly indicated their defense strategy: to ask as soon as possible for a motion to cancel the procedure, to try to demonstrate that the entire procedure of the Democratic prosecutor in Manhattan is unfounded in law, does not hold. What they would actually like is for the Manhattan prosecutor, Democrat Alvin Bragg, to be disavowed by a judge. If that happened, obviously, it would become much more difficult for other federal or local prosecutors to prosecute Donald Trump.

The fact is that in addition to this first case in which he will be charged, there are still many other ongoing investigations that target the former president...

Yes, indeed, and it is really all this sequence that will have to be scrutinized. It is known that Donald Trump is currently under investigation, both on his role in the insurrection of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, but also on his management of classified archives, which he kept for more than a year, at his private home, in contravention of the laws of the land. And here obviously, we are sure of possible crimes that are much heavier, including in terms of the penalty incurred.

And one wonders if the Manhattan prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, has not brought down a historic unthinkable, that is to say to indict for the first time an ex-president. Which could ease the burden on other prosecutors investigating Donald Trump, because now they don't have to worry about being the first to indict an ex-president – it's done. And they could go more directly to new indictments.

► READ ALSO: Classified documents: Donald Trump faces justice that would have new evidence

Could these new indictments take place before the 2024 Republican and presidential primaries?

The first ballots of the Republican primary will not take place until February 2024, leaving almost a year. So a lot can happen. And that's why we have to be careful about political analysis: yes, in the short term, today, it benefits Donald Trump with his camp. But if there were to be a lot of indictments, would some Republican voters not like another candidate, perhaps as radical, DeSantis-style, but without all these judicial "pans" hanging on a candidate?

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