STATESIDE STORIES: Trump Faces More Federal Charges

Donald Trump at the two-day Turning Point Action Conference held at the Palm Beach Convention
Center, West Palm Beach, Florida in July 2023 where he was the event headliner

by Mary Foran

Former US President Donald Trump was indicted last week for the fourth time on 91 federal and state charges in Fulton County, Georgia. The charges could lead to a potential maximum sentence of 717.5 years in prison, although Trump is unlikely to serve that much time.

While all of the crimes which Trump has been indicted for, including conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, most do not carry mandatory sentences if convicted and can also be punishable by a fine.

Trump has strongly denied all of the charges against him, pleading not guilty to the first three sets of charges and decrying the Fulton County indictment as a “witch hunt”.

If Trump were convicted and sentenced to prison, that would not necessarily stop him from serving as president if he were reelected in 2024. He could pardon himself, although the legality of that is in question.

Trump is the first sitting or former president to be indicted on federal charges.

In scandal after scandal, US President Joe Biden is being investigated for the mishandling of classified documents and foreign bribery. His son Hunter’s business dealings with China and Ukraine are being investigated and Hunter has been charged with tax evasion.

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Images
Featured image/Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA2.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped. (There were some 6000 attendees and, according to the New York Times, roughly a third of  the Republican presidential field were speakers at the TPA Conference.)
Scale/Clker-Free-Vector-Images, Pixabay. Text and vignette supplied.