On Tuesday, April 25, President Joe Biden announced his 2024 re-election campaign. With former president Donald Trump currently leading in Republican presidential polling by a wide margin, 2024 is shaping up to be a rematch of the 2020 election.  

Unlike 2020, however, 2024 has an added twist: Trump is facing criminal charges in New York. On March 30, Trump was indicted on 34 felony charges by a Manhattan grand jury. Each charge accuses him of “falsifying business records in the first degree.” The historic indictment marked the first time a former president was criminally charged. 

Despite the indictment, he holds firm in his goal to win back the presidency, which he launched following the 2022 midterms. During an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump stated he’d “never drop out” of the race, even if he’s convicted. 

Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges in the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse on April 4. He flew back to his Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida immediately after the conclusion of his arraignment, where he made a statement condemning the investigation. 

“God bless you all, and I never thought anything like this could happen in America. I never thought it could happen. The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it,” Trump said. 

Despite the indictment, he holds firm in his goal to win back the presidency, which he launched following the 2022 midterms. During an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump stated he’d “never drop out” of the race, even if he’s convicted. 

Trump’s attempted prosecution is spearheaded by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. He made a statement after the arraignment outlining Trump’s alleged crimes and false statements.

The trial is scheduled to continue on Dec. 4.  

The charges center around alleged “hush money” payments Trump and his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal to ensure their silence about their alleged affairs with the former president in the mid-to-late 2000s.

At the time, Trump was a candidate in the 2016 presidential election and wanted to bury potentially controversial stories that had the potential to derail his oval office ambitions. The 34 counts of alleged business record falsification were meant to save Trump from embarrassment by keeping the payments off-record.  

In June 2016, a month before Trump won the Republican presidential nomination, McDougal and her lawyer, Keith Davidson, met with the National Enquirer, a celebrity tabloid, to discuss buying the rights to her story. On Aug. 5, the magazine secured the rights for $150,000, though they never published the story. 

On Oct. 8, Daniels, now represented by Davidson, informed former National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard that she wanted to report her alleged affair with Trump. 

Howard and David Pecker, the former CEO of the magazine’s parent company American Media, Inc. (AMI), now known as Accelerate360, got Davidson in contact with Cohen. They agreed to a deal where Daniels was paid $130,000 in exchange for her story and a non-disclosure agreement. 

Cohen opened a bank account for the firm Essential Consultants on Oct. 26 and transferred $131,000 to the account. He then wired the payment to Davidson.

In January 2017, Cohen and the Trump Organization agreed to a $420,000 reimbursement paid in monthly installments of $35,000 for a year. 

On Dec. 12, 2018, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for multiple charges, including campaign finance violations. According to prosecutors, the deals he brokered with the National Enquirer exceeded the $2,700 limit corporations are allowed to donate to federal campaigns. Cohen claimed he acted under the discretion of “a candidate for federal office.” The candidate he was referring to was Trump. 

Hours after Cohen’s sentencing, AMI admitted to being “in concert” with Trump’s campaign to bury McDougal’s story and “prevent it from influencing the campaign” in a negative manner. Phone calls and text messages between Trump, Cohen, Howard and Pecker further revealed the National Enquirer’s role in helping Trump withhold contentious stories.

The trial is at least a year away from its conclusion. It is too soon to comment on the likelihood of Trump’s conviction. Still, with Biden’s announcement and the current hyper-polarized political landscape, the trial will have enormous consequences for the makeup of the White House in 2024. It looks like the American people are in for a bumpy ride – time to buckle up.