Trump’s legal nightmare: What’s next?

Former US president hit with $438.3 million in penalties and 90 criminal charges even as he draws closer to Republican nomination

Former US president Donald Trump was dealt two huge legal blows in recent weeks. The first was a verdict by a New York civil jury which ordered him to pay $83.3 million in damages to the writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her after assaulting her in 1996. Several days later, a New York judge ordered Trump to pay $355 million in penalties for lying to banks about his wealth and also put a scanner on how his businesses are run.

Though his real estate companies have not been dissolved and he won’t be out of money, the two rulings have come as a shock to the man who may very well return to the White House next January.

Trump now faces more than 90 charges in four criminal cases. This includes the hush money case where he is accused of paying $130,000 to an adult film star to keep quiet about an affair with him and then falsifying his accounts to show this as legal fees. This trial will start in late March and will be the first criminal trial of a US president.

There is also the case related to the Capitol riots and whether Trump conspired to sabotage Biden’s 2020 election win. However, it’s not yet clear whether the trial will begin before the November presidential election. A third criminal trial is also likely to be postponed.

So the big question is: How will all of this affect Trump’s re election bid? Trump has milked the cases he faces as “political vendetta”, a strategy that has so far only worked with his diehard support base. A poll by the New York Times and Siena College in December showed that 62 per cent of Republican primary voters backed Trump as the nominee even if he is convicted, while 87 per cent of Republican primary voters believed the same in New Hampshire, where Trump won comfortably last month. But this is largely his committed base.

Experts say Trump could face trouble with swing voters and more moderate republicans who may not take too kindly to seeing a convicted felon as president.

Last month, a poll by Morning Consult and Bloomberg showed that 53 per cent of registered voters in seven swing states would not vote for Trump if he was convicted. This included 23 per cent of Republican voters. Also, 55 per cent will not vote for Trump if he goes to jail.

A Gallup poll released in late January found that only 29 per cent of Americans would vote for a candidate charged with a felony. Another poll in South Carolina by the Washington Post/Monmouth University found that 36 per cent of Republican party primary voters would want Trump to be replaced as the Republican nominee if he were convicted after winning the nomination, while 62 per cent said they would vote for Trump if he were convicted and remained on the ballot.

Polls have shown that most Americans do not see the hush money to an adult star as the most serious charge against Trump. However the other cases could potentially see prison sentences. How Americans (moderate and swing voters in particular) view these criminal charges against Trump, will determine the election outcome.