Trump guilty in Stormy Daniels case. Tycoon: 'We live in a fascist state'. Biden: "Trump threatens democracy"

Trump was accused of fraud and falsifying documents and accounts in order to conceal payments to a porn star, Daniels, who had threatened to make public the story of her extramarital affair with the tycoon, which had taken place six years earlier, on the eve of the 2016 election. Trump, in the prosecution's reconstruction, feared that the revelations could cost him his chance of a White House election (which then happened). Consequently, he instructed his former fixer Michael Cohen to pay Daniels $130,000, money he later repaid to Cohen by falsely reporting those payments as legal fees. Cohen, who has long since broken with Trump, was the prosecution's key witness during the trial, despite the defence's efforts to discredit him as a liar. The prosecution was also able to leverage evidence of the false documentation of the reimbursements. He pulled the strings of his argument by accusing Trump of a conspiracy with the aim of manipulating the election outcome.

The twelve jurors, before unanimously agreeing, asked to hear parts of the testimony again, starting with Cohen's, but also the words of right-wing publisher David Pecker, who admitted the existence of an elaborate strategy to help Trump by buying and covering up stories potentially damaging to his campaign, including other romantic trysts beyond the Daniels affair. Trump has always denied any charges.

The Daniels scandal trial in Manhattan was particularly revealing because it is likely to remain the only criminal case against Trump to go to trial before the election. The other open federal trials (for attempts to overturn the 2020 vote, and for the theft of top secret documents from the White House) could be delayed for a long time and are also subject to decisions this summer by the Supreme Court on degrees of immunity claimed by Trump for his actions when he was President.

Above all, the political impact of the verdict now remains to be seen: certain groups of voters have indicated that a conviction could push them away from Trump at the ballot box. According to some analyses, this group could represent 6% of the electorate and be decisive in uncertain and crucial states for success in the race for the White House. So far, however, the scandals have not dented his popularity in the polls.