Expert comment Last updated 05 April 2023
A former anti-corruption prosecutor for the New York State Anti-Corruption Office and now a pre-eminent professor of US constitutional law and criminal procedure explains the current criminal charges facing Donald Trump.
Professor Bennett Gershman, Visiting Scholar at the Centre for American Legal Studies, Birmingham City University, shared his expertise following the former president's highly publicised indictment of the former president in New York on Tuesday 5 April 2023.
The academic said: “Trump’s indictment contains 34 counts essentially for an isolated criminal act. This may seem unduly lengthy and redundant. However, the manner in which the 34 felonies were committed justifies the numerous felony charges.
“This is because the Grand Jury and the District Attorney centred almost exclusively on Trump’s criminal conduct not just by paying hush money to a porn star and another woman to buy their silence, or falsifying business records, but by orchestrating a plot to undermine the democratic process by fraudulently influencing the 2016 election.”
Professor Gershman continued, saying: “In other words, by covering up his salacious sexual misconduct through multiple false records – financial, tax, emails, texts – he succeeded in hiding truthful information which if it were made public would have seriously damaged his quest for the presidency.
“The judge did not issue an order directing Trump and his lawyers not to make inflammatory public statements which might materially prejudice the legal proceedings and a fair trial.
“The case is on a fast track for an early trial. But that may not happen. It may depend on what happens in Fulton County, Georgia, and Washington D.C., where Trump is being investigated for other and arguably much more serious crimes to influence the 2020 election.
“If he gets indicted in those jurisdictions - which is now more likely after New York has now taken the historic and unprecedented step to indict an ex-president for the first time in American history – the New York indictment may take a back seat to accusations and trials on the other more serious charges."