 Hello everyone. Welcome to another International Relations capsule for the Shankar IAS Academy. This time we are turning to the election season in the United States because of a particular incident involving President, former President Trump, who is expected to be a Republican candidate again. The election system in the United States is very much involved with the legal system also. Of course, legal system comes in all elections but in the United States sometimes that takes precedence over election results. We know the cases where the Supreme Court decided who the President would be. So the election and the involvement of law in the election scene is baffling for many countries because such system does not exist in many countries. So there will be many twists and turns in cases which affect the election results. And this is rather strange because Donald Trump who actually violated all the laws of the country by refusing to accept the results of the last election and even called for a rebellion and caused a lot of damage to the Congress building and committed several crimes in one shot is still a leading candidate for presidential candidate for the Republican Party. At the same time, he has suddenly been summoned by the grand jury in New York on another case which is far less serious than the incidents of January 6, 2020. So it is a strange thing that has happened but a grand jury in New York took up the case of a scandal involving Donald Trump. According to the case, he is supposed to have paid some money to a porn film star who was supposed to have had an affair with him before the first elections. There are lots of stories at that time about several women involved with him. But this particular case, the case was not that he had an affair or he paid money to hush for up, that is the case. But the real issue is that he has violated the rules regarding financial transactions during the election. So a certain amount of money which he paid to his lawyer as lawyer's fees is supposed to have gone to this lady as a kind of compensation for her keeping quiet. And this has come to the grand jury. This grand jury is a system in the United States which we do not have. India had the system but then we dropped it sometime ago. In the United States, most states except two which are Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Major issues of cases of the last kind will go to the court only after a grand jury examination of the matter. So, New York, naturally, is a high-side grand jury and Mr. Trump was invited to appear before the grand jury and they had a preliminary hearing of the case. And then they decided to arraign him. Arraign him means he was asked to come to the court and listen to the charges against him. So, on the 4th of this month, former President Trump came from his Florida home to New York to appear before the grand jury, which indicted him and arranged him in the sense that he was told the case against him. And then decided to try him later in the year. So this is a major development because this is the first time that a former President of the United States is charged with crimes relating to his personal matters. So, there was about 34 charges made against him on the April 4th relating to various aspects of what is called felony. That means misconduct in matters relating to accounting. So, on the one hand, someone who brought the country to the brink of a civil war. That case is not come up, but what has come up is a much less serious case and that too involved in some kind of an accounting procedure. Of course, Donald Trump has denied all the charges and he is ready to appear before the court and this has been fixed for later in the year, but he has also requested for a postponement. So, his tactic seems to be to postpone the trial till the elections or at least till his nomination is fixed. So, he went back to Florida after a few minutes in the court. The court just told him what the cases were and then he was told to appear again in the court which shows that there is a case for conviction. But the interesting thing is that even if he is convinced and even if he is jail, that will not affect his ability or eligibility to contest the elections. So, the situation is such that the first time a president has been elected and charged and he is appearing for trials later in the year. He is the top contender from the Republican Party for the presidency and he has even a chance to win. This is the irony of the situation at the moment. We do not know what will happen whether the Republicans will choose somebody else or whether he himself will be the candidate, whether he will win. All these are open questions. But the interesting thing is the law which seems to operate in a rather strange manner in the United States. Republicans and Donald Trump had a fair chance of winning the midterm elections at the end of last year. In fact, it was expected that the Republicans might capture both the Senate and the Congress. But in actual fact, President Biden did better than expected. He lost the Congress to the Republicans but he was able to regain the Senate. So, this particular result of the midterm election showed that Donald Trump and the Republicans do not have a walkover in the next elections. The chances are more or less the same for both. But the opinion polls show that even after the charging, even after the arraignment of the former president, his ranking within the polls is higher than that of his other candidates. And it is a very early time to talk about that because the Republican Party has not held its primaries and even though Donald Trump is considered to be a candidate, it will take some time before this is settled. So, we have a former president, drawn before the court, facing trial, but at the same time leading in the presidential race from the Republican Party. This grand jury system was adopted in the U.S. consequent to the Fifth Amendment and every state has the option to decide on the adoption of grand jury for indictment, as well as for trials. So, out of all the states, Connecticut and Pennsylvania are the only states which do not use grand jury system for indictment or for trials. In 23 states, including New York, grand jury indictments are required for certain crimes. In 25 states, it is optional. While grand jury indictments would need only a majority, grand jury trials would need unanimous decision for conviction. So, it is far from clear whether he will be convicted and that we will know only later and Mr. Trump is trying to postpone the whole trial till the elections are over and there are certain kinds of uncertainty. So, the case is, as I mentioned, that Trump instructed his lawyer to pay US dollars 130,000 to a lady called Stormy Daniels. She is supposed to be a star in porno movies with whom he had an affair starting in 2006 to silence her during the presidential campaign. But the main issues are neither the affair nor the payment, but a violation of accounting procedures by showing that the amount was paid not to her but to the lawyer. So, these are final points of law which we do not know much about. So, Trump suddenly announced that he was likely to be indicted and asked his followers to protest the usual trick. And the court had to make special arrangements for security on April 4th. In New York, it was a big event. The court said the next in-person hearing for December 4th, 2023 in New York. So, Mr. Trump said that he will be represented by his lawyer but the court did not agree and he has to personally appear. But Trump's lawyers are trying to postpone the hearing till the elections are over in 2024. So, Trump is meeting this challenge both politically as well as legally. He has attributed this enactment to political persecution and election interference. He sent emails to his supporters asking them for donations to defend our movement for the never ending witch hunt. They called it a witch hunt and said people should pay him, make donations so that he can find the case. The 2024 Trump campaign stated that it received over 4 million of donations in the 24 hours after the enactment was announced. So, instead of it affecting him negatively, there has been a positive development. And 7 million within three days. In other words, the indictment has only boosted his campaign and the matter will become irrelevant as the campaign gains momentum. His support among the Republicans has not dwindled and his criticism of the Biden administration has only become more acute. They said back the Republicans had in the midterm elections had strengthened the Democrats. But the Trump rhetoric is that Biden might lead the US to a world war while the US did not go to war anywhere during the Trump presidency. So, these are the two claims that he makes that he was a peaceful president. There was no war during his time and he says that President Biden has made a mistake in supporting Ukraine fully and using NATO forces. He said he would end the war in Ukraine within days if he comes back to power. Hours after his brief court appearance, Trump was more defined than a Jason defendant when he addressed a friendly audience back home in Florida. So, the situation today is political commentators the US believe that the indictment will make no difference to the possibility of his being the Republican candidate and his chances of winning the elections are real. The Wall Street Journal poll, one of the famous newspapers in the US shows Trump and President Joe Biden each at 45% among registered voters in a hypothetical 2024 matchups. So, the results of the poll in the Wall Street Journal is not different from what it was a little earlier. Indeed, the timing might have been a boon for Mr. Trump's campaign fundraising coming just before the end of the first quarter. It likely add to the momentum he has gained in recent weeks over Governor DeSantis. Governor DeSantis is another Republican candidate. Observe the Christian Science Monitor. So, both these famous newspapers, important newspapers, Wall Street Journal as well as the Christian Science Monitor believe that the charges against him and the indictment and his argument that this is political thing have given him a boost for his candidature. But the strange thing is, Trump had made several statements in the last few months, which appeared to be negative from the perspective of his candidacy. For example, he had said that 22 elections, 2020 elections were stolen by the Democrats. He praised Putin as a genius. He claimed that he is an overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination. And all these have not destroyed his credibility. And he is the least predictable of politicians. But as of now, though he is in legal trouble, it is clear that he expects to run and become president again. This is the consequence of the legal battle which is waging in New York. The expectation was that this would be negative from his perspective and therefore his candidature may in fact fail. But what we see now soon after the grand jury trial is that his popularity has only increased. This is basically because of the Ukraine war and Biden is being rejected as having created the war and might lead the United States into a world war. So for these reasons, he seems to have survived this particular test and it depends as to when the trial is held and whether he is convicted. But even if he is convicted, we have not heard the last of Donald Trump. He will continue to be a leading politician. He may even be the Republican candidate and it's even possible that he may win the elections. But these are too early to predict, but this is the present situation of the election scene in the United States. And I thought I should brief you on this because the legal points relating to what happened to your former president may be of interest to your examiners. So you may like to follow these developments till the examination so that you know the picture of the legal situation and you might also want to know what the grand jury is and what is an indictment, what is an arraignment and what's a trial and what itself would be. But this situation will unveil only in the coming months. Now the question is what happened to the issue of official documents being found in Trump's house? Well, nothing new has come out. These are being examined. And there is a chance that some of these documents carelessly filed away into private home may lead to some charges against him. But these are still under examination, but there is certainly an amount of suspicion that some of these documents may not be favorable to him and that may cause another crisis in the future. But we do not have details at the moment. Thank you.