Trump to make history with sordid ‘zombie’ trial

Joe Miller

In March 2021, an investigation into payments allegedly made by Donald Trump to buy the silence of a porn star was, in the view of Manhattan prosecutors tasked with pursuing the former president, dead and buried.

Yet on Monday (Tuesday AEST), the “zombie” case – abandoned by a former district attorney and by federal prosecutors who presumably thought it too flimsy to charge, before being revived last year – will roar back to life, as the first-ever criminal indictment of a former US president proceeds to trial in New York.

Trump faces more serious charges elsewhere, over his alleged attempts to interrupt the peaceful transition of power and retention of classified documents in the bathroom of his Mar-a-Lago mansion.

But it is the “hush money” case – revolving around allegations of a sordid, backroom deal made in the days before the 2016 election to prevent the revelation of an extramarital affair – that looks increasingly likely to be the only one to be heard by a jury of Trump’s peers ahead of November’s election.

For six weeks, the presumptive Republican nominee for president will be forced off the campaign trail to sit in a Manhattan courtroom and fight a potential conviction that could make him the first felon to enter the White House.

Trump, his lawyers, and his media allies have repeatedly decried the case as being a politically motivated “witch hunt” by a Democratic New York prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, seeking to detract from what they claim is a lacklustre record fighting street crimes in the metropolis.

But even legal scholars and experienced lawyers from across the political divide have expressed scepticism. “The weaknesses in the case are clear,” said Richard Klein, a professor at Touro Law school. The conduct in question is so slight, he adds, that it amounts to “a silly, trite, trivial case”.

‘There is no question that there is bad behaviour’

The charges revolve around alleged payments totalling $US130,000 to Stormy Daniels, who threatened to reveal what she claimed had been an affair with Trump. However unseemly, that in and of itself is not illegal under New York state law.