Trump fears conviction in Capitol riots trial

Republican front-runner believes a Washington jury will find him guilty, but that might not sway US voters

DONALD TRUMP reportedly believes he will be convicted of attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 election in a trial later this year.

The former president expects a jury in Washington DC will find him guilty of conspiring to “defraud the American people” on four charges that carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, Axios reported yesterday, citing unnamed sources.

Such a verdict could throw his reelection campaign into disarray.

The trial was scheduled to begin on March 4 but now looks likely to take place later this year, and could come before the US election in November.

The case is linked to the Capitol riots on Jan 6, 2021, which Mr Trump is accused of inciting in his alleged attempts to overturn the election result.

He has repeatedly claimed the charges are politically motivated.

The Axios report came as Fani Willis, the district attorney prosecuting Mr Trump’s election interference case in Georgia, admitted she had a relationship with the case’s chief lawyer.

Ms Willis said she had a “personal relationship” with Nathan Wade, who has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute Mr Trump in recent months, but said it had begun after he started working on the case.

She added there were no grounds to dismiss the case or to remove her from the prosecution.

Mr Trump has claimed the relationship is evidence of corruption and said it undermined the charges against him, which include racketeering and lying about the 2020 election results.

On Friday he said Ms Willis had used the case to “get her ‘lover’ more money”, adding: “THAT MEANS THAT THIS SCAM IS TOTALLY DISCREDITED & OVER!” he wrote on social media.

Ms Willis has also subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee to hand over documents relating to Mr Wade.

Polling shows more than half of Americans would be less likely to vote for Mr Trump if he was found guilty in Washington. Among Republican voters, 70 per cent say they believe Mr

Trump is innocent and would not change their voting intention based on the outcome of the trial.

Axios reported that Mr Trump plans to attend every day of the trial to emphasise his claims that the legal proceedings are “corrupt”.

A new poll commissioned by Bloomberg found that Mr Biden is ahead in a hypothetical head-to-head contest with Mr Trump nationwide, but a separate survey by Quinnipiac University found the Republican frontrunner leads in seven key swing states.

The election interference case is just one of four criminal proceedings against Mr Trump, with a trial over his alleged falsification of business records set to take place as early as March, and the Georgia trial set to begin in August.

The former president is also set to take the stand in Miami, where federal prosecutors allege he mishandled classified government documents after leaving office.

Mr Trump has launched several legal challenges to the cases, including a Supreme Court petition, which he hopes will lead to a ruling that he is immune to prosecution for actions taken while he was president. Such a ruling appears unlikely.