Former US President Donald Trump is facing several court cases ahead of the 2024 election year. © Michael Kappeler/dpa
The next US presidential elections are scheduled for November 2024 - ex-President Trump is also applying for the Republican candidacy. About eight months earlier, he now has another appointment.
New York/Palm Beach - Former U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to stand trial only about eight months before the presidential election in the United States. The start of his trial in connection with hush money payments to a star was tentatively set for March 25, 2024, yesterday, CNN and CNBC reported.
According to CNN, the judge in charge, Juan Merchan, emphasized that he did not want to prevent Trump from campaigning in any way. The 76-year-old was informed by the judge in the hearing, which lasted only a few minutes, that he was not allowed to publish internal court documents. Trump himself was connected via video, wore a suit, sat in front of two US flags and did not comment.
$130,000 hush money
Trump has been indicted in New York since the beginning of April on 34 counts: The prosecutor's office accuses the Republican of falsifying business documents. He had wanted to hide harmful information and illegal activities before and after the 2016 presidential election in order to improve his chances in the vote. According to New York election laws, it is a criminal offence to conspire to advance a candidate in an election by unlawful means.
The background to the case is that Trump had paid $130,000 in hush money to actress Stormy Daniels shortly before his election as president. She had claimed she had had sex with him. Trump denies an affair, but not that money has flowed. Non-disclosure agreements between two parties are not illegal in themselves. However, Trump is accused of illegally accounting for the payments, trying to conceal them illegally and thus trying to cover up other violations of the law.
Trump pleads "not guilty"
Trump is the first ex-president in U.S. history to stand trial in a criminal case. The candidate for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election had pleaded "not guilty".
Trump also has to deal with courts in several other cases. At the beginning of May, a New York jury had considered it proven that Trump had attacked and sexually abused the US author E. Jean Carroll in 1996 in a New York luxury department store. Under criminal law, the allegations are time-barred, but Carroll had the right to take legal action under civil law. The jury also ordered for defamation that Trump must pay a total of five million dollars (about 4.56 million euros) to the now 79-year-old.
Trump appealed the verdict – and made derogatory remarks about Carroll in a CNN interview after the verdict. The then expanded another defamation lawsuit around these statements by Trump, as US media reported unanimously. Accordingly, she is now demanding another "very substantial" sum. Dpa