Donald Trump said Friday that he intended
to “testify”
at the bar as part of his criminal trial in New York, which begins Monday, for payments aimed at obtaining the silence of a former pornographic film star just before the presidential election of 2016. Asked by the press at his residence in Mar-a-Lago in Florida, to know if he considered that such testimony would be potentially risky from a legal point of view, the former American president replied:
“I will bear witness. I tell the truth"
.
The Republican presidential candidate in November is as usual in the courts of New York. He notably appeared there several times during his civil trial for fraud, at the end of which he was fined $355 million, before appealing. His first criminal trial, which begins Monday, will determine whether or not the 77-year-old Republican billionaire was guilty of falsifying accounting documents for his real estate group Trump Organization.
A jury of 12 New Yorkers
These forgeries would have made it possible, according to the prosecution, to conceal the payment of 130,000 dollars in the final stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign to a former porn star, Stormy Daniels, so that she would keep quiet about a sexual relationship that had taken place ten years ago. earlier with Donald Trump, which the latter denies. First stage of the trial: the judge will have to assemble a jury of 12 New Yorkers, and six alternates.
Donald Trump, who inherited a fortune in real estate and notably owns a skyscraper in his name in Manhattan, has repeated on numerous occasions that it was impossible for him to benefit from a fair trial in the megalopolis, Democratic stronghold.