Rallies and debates used to define campaigns. Now they're about juries and trials
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has been sitting for hours a day in a Manhattan courtroom, where his hush money trial is nearing its end
NEW YORK (AP) — Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has been sitting for hours a day in a Manhattan courtroom, where his hush-money trial is nearing its end. On Monday, a trial is set to begin in Wilmington, Delaware, for President Joe Biden's son Hunter, who is accused of lying on a federal gun purchase form.
While presidents have been deposed in criminal matters, impeached and pardoned, and their family members entangled in legal scrapes before, never has the criminal courtroom taken center stage in a presidential election like this.
"It's so unusual that we lack the terminology to express how unusual it is," said presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky, author of the upcoming book, “Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic.”
The two criminal cases are in no way the same. One involves the conduct of a former president who is running to reclaim the White House, yet stands accused of falsifying business records to conceal an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 election. The other focuses on a private citizen — albeit the current president’s son — who is facing charges of lying on a federal gun-purchase form when he claimed he wasn’t using drugs.
