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Picture courtesy: (Mark Peterson via Reuter) Former US President Donald Trump to stand trial at the Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, United States.
The verdict could have significant consequences for the 2024 White House election, potentially reshaping the political landscape as the nation prepares for the upcoming presidential race.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business documents to conceal a payment that bought porn star Stormy Daniels’ silence just before the 2016 election.
Daniels had threatened to make her account public of an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, which he vehemently disputes.
The New York case is usually seen as the least significant of the four criminal prosecutions he faces.
However, in recent weeks, the Republican presidential nominee has spent more time in court than campaigning, drawing attention to the only case that is likely to go to trial before his November 5 election against Democratic President Joe Biden.
Here is how three potential outcomes from the jury room, a guilty conviction, an acquittal, or a deadlocked jury may affect the presidential race.
According to opinion polls, a guilty finding may represent a huge electoral risk to Trump in an election that could be decided by only tens of thousands of votes in a few battleground states.
According to a Reuters poll conducted in April among registered voters, one in every four Republicans stated that if Trump is found guilty in a criminal trial, they will vote against him. In the same poll, 60% of independents indicated they would vote against him if he was convicted of a crime.
Republican and Democratic consultants have differing perspectives on the consequences of a guilty decision. Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, doubts that as many as one-fourth of Republicans would abandon Trump if he is convicted.
However, Ayres believes that even if a small number of more moderate Republicans and independents are turned off by a guilty conviction, it may benefit Biden in a close election.
Ayres emphasises that the structure of the New York case, which was brought by a Democratic prosecutor and is based on untested legal methods, would enable Trump and his Republican allies paint a guilty decision as a political hit job.
“If I were trying to design a court case that would be easy for Republicans to dismiss as a partisan witch hunt, I would design exactly the case that’s being brought in New York,” Ayres stated.
Republican consultant Tricia McLaughlin, who worked on former Trump primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign, believes a guilty conviction will have a psychological impact on Trump, who despises losing.
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