Donald Trump's empire before the judges

New-York

Donald Trump could not have dreamed of a better situation: less than a year before the presidential election in the United States, he is leading the voting intentions among eight candidates in the Republican primaries, seeing his scores jump with each new judicial summons , and is now ahead of Joe Biden in five “swing states” out of six which will seal the fate of the polls. A single shadow tarnishes the horizon of the tribune of Mar-a-Lago, Florida: among the litany of lawsuits filed against him, including four criminal ones, one of them occupies an eminent place in the radius of his nocturnal anxieties .

In New York, he testified directly Monday in a civil trial for fraud committed under cover of his real estate empire, the Trump Organization, with which he built a fortune estimated at $1.7 billion, won the loyalty of generations of politicians and mounted a successful presidential campaign in 2016. He thus denounced a “political witch hunt”, saying he was the victim of a legal machination worthy, according to him, of “third world countries and banana republics”. The tone rose particularly when he called New York State Attorney General Letitia James a “little politician.”

What is the Attorney General accusing him of? The overvaluation of its real estate assets, such as the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, to obtain better loans from partner banks. This gigantic scam would seem almost benign in view of other criminal proceedings to come in 2024, covering charges of obstruction of justice and sedition.

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But the New York trial occupies an eminent place among Trumpian anxieties, as it could cost Joe Biden's predecessor much worse than his freedom: his fortune. Judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing the proceedings, has already determined the firm's guilt. He even ordered the seizure of the company, but this ruling was blocked on appeal. It remains to be determined what the amount of financial penalties inflicted on the patriarch and his sons will be. “Tish” James is demanding $250 million from them, as well as a formal ban on doing business in New York State. Combative, Donald Trump defends himself step by step, quibbling about the value of his real estate empire and castigating “little judges” who are chasing him, as part of a “political persecution” supposedly hatched by the Democrats, the judges and the American press.

This media theater is not in vain. Cornered into court, Donald Trump measures the risks inherent in his desire to return to the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Although an opinion poll overwhelms Joe Biden, who is plummeting due to inflation and his firmly pro-Israeli stance among 18-30 year olds, one event could radically reverse the electoral course: a condemnation of his opponent in the trial which targets him from March 2024 in Washington for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and to cling to power.

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“If the former president is convicted and sentenced - as many of his allies expect him to be in the January 6 trial ... about 6 percent of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin say they would change their vote to Mr. Biden,” write Jonathan Swan, Ruth Igielnik and Maggie Haberman in the New York Times. “That would be enough, potentially, to decide the election.”