When Donald Trump was indicted a bit more than a year ago over hush money paid to a porn star, it turbocharged the Republican’s presidential campaign.
He surged ahead of his rivals for the White House nomination, gaining a lead he never relinquished.
Trump went on trial in New York on Monday, seven months before Americans will go to the polls on Nov. 5 to choose a president.
The history-making trial, the first of a former U.S. president, could again boost Trump’s presidential bid, some analysts and political strategists said.
While opinion polls suggest roughly a third of Republican voters would not vote for Trump if he is convicted of a crime, the hush money trial is considered by many legal experts to be the weakest of the four criminal cases he faces.
Trump has used the looming trial to reinforce a central campaign message that his supporters have embraced: He is the victim of a two-tier justice system that favors Democrats and discriminates against Republicans, and that Democratic incumbent Joe Biden is trying to knock him out of the race.
Trump is using the trial to energize his supporters and – with legal bills mounting – raise more money from them to take on a much-better funded Biden. A hung jury or an acquittal would hand a major political victory to the former president.
“This is an outrage,” Trump said before entering the New York state courtroom on Monday. “This is political persecution.”
As jury selection begun, his campaign sent a fundraising text message to supporters saying, “The Biden trial against me has begun. They’re after YOU – and I’m the only thing standing in their way.”
The New York case is not a federal trial – it was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg – so the Biden administration is not involved. The Justice Department says it is acting without political bias in the two federal prosecutions Trump faces.
Rick Hasen, a professor of law at the UCLA School of Law and a critic of Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, called the hush money charges against Trump “so minor” they risk undermining the importance of the more serious cases he faces, including state and federal charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 result.
Hasen said once voters actually look at the details of this case, many will view it skeptically.
“And for his supporters, Trump has set up a no-lose situation,” Hasen said. “He will say a conviction will be more evidence that the deep state and the justice system is arrayed against him. And if he’s acquitted, he can claim victory.”
Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said the trial was a “political attack” on Trump, claiming it was “election interference.” Cheung called the case “a show trial straight out of 1930s Stalinist Soviet Union,” adding that voters will back Trump “as he fights against the weaponization and abuse of our judicial system.”