Today, the trial of Donald Trump and his two children begins in New York in a civil court accused of overinflating their assets for years in a case that threatens his financial empire and is the prelude to a legal marathon that awaits the Republican front-runner for the 2024 presidential election.

The 77-year-old former US president announced yesterday, Sunday night, that he plans to appear today for opening arguments before the New York State Supreme Court.

“Tomorrow morning I will go to court to fight for my name and my reputation,” the former real estate mogul said in a late-night message on the Truth Social platform, describing the proceedings in New York. “corrupt” and the judge in charge of the case “unbalanced”.

“This whole case is a scam!!!!” he also writes.

Trump cannot face jail time in the case, but his trial offers a glimpse of others to come and could disrupt his campaign to win the Republican nomination for president.

After he was charged in four criminal cases which have so far not hurt his popularity among the Republican base, Trump is mainly expected to appear in a federal court in Washington on March 4, accused of trying to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden .

His next date with justice is again in New York state, accused of accounting fraud, and the next in Florida for negligence in the management of classified documents after leaving the presidency.

The trial, which begins today, suddenly took on significant proportions last week when Judge Arthur Engoron, who is presiding, ruled that “repeated fraud” had been established. and that the New York state attorney general’s office had already established that Donald Trump and his group’s general staff had “overstated” their assets by between $812 million and $2.2 billion from 2014 to 2021.

Accordingly the judge made an order on the revocation in the state of New York of business licenses of Donald Trump and two of his children, of Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., executive vice presidents of the Trump Organization, as well as the seizure of companies involved in the lawsuit, which will be placed in liquidators.

If the order is implemented, the sanctions would deal “a major blow to Donald Trump’s ability to do business in New York state,” according to Will Thomas, a business law professor at the University of Michigan.

Trump, who made his fortune in real estate and casinos in the 1980s and had promised to run the US like his businesses, will therefore lose control of many of his group’s “flagships” such as the Tower Trump on 5th Avenue in Manhattan.