Will Donald Trump stand trial before the November presidential election? Doubts are growing as New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday, March 14, to everyone's surprise, asked the judge to postpone by up to 30 days the criminal trial due to start in Manhattan on March 25. Bragg is trying to convict the former president of having paid, illegally according to him, $130,000 (€119,000) to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in the middle of the presidential campaign, in order to buy her silence about an alleged sexual relationship. The prosecutor has received thousands of pages of new federal documents and wanted to give Trump's lawyers time to review them.

This new development increases the level of uncertainty surrounding a trial that has always been considered legally risky. The facts are both old and of secondary significance compared to the big issue: The accusations made against Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 elections and his role in his supporters' attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

But on this point also, the situation is deadlocked. A federal trial in Washington is suspended pending a decision from the Supreme Court, which is due to examine in April whether Trump benefits from any presidential immunity. In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting Trump and 14 suspected accomplices for the attempt to overturn the election result in that state, has been weakened since it was revealed that she had been romantically involved with Nathan Wade, a lawyer from a private firm hired to investigate the case.

In two years, Wade's firm received $650,000 from the prosecutor's office, while the couple multiplied their costly escapades in California and the Caribbean. Trump's lawyers have asked for Willis to be recused, arguing that the couple had an interest in suing the former president to make money. On Friday, an Atlanta judge made Wade's withdrawal a condition of the prosecutor's continued involvement in the case.

Another hurdle Trump must overcome is the payment of a $450 million bond by the end of the month, the punishment ordered by a New York judge for overvaluing his real estate empire and thus obtaining more favorable financial terms from his bankers. But this sanction, obtained in February by New York Attorney General Letitia James, looks like a Pyrrhic victory, so exorbitant does the penalty seem to observers.

As a result, the former president seems poised to triumph politically from his trials. He has denounced a witch hunt and succeeded in turning his court appearances into a racial and partisan affair. Indeed, the three prosecutors pursuing him are all African Americans affiliated with the Democratic Party. Trump never ceases to accuse them of racism against him, in a politicized judicial system.

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