Donald Trump’s electoral victory was historic in a race that would have been the first in the United States.
A victory for Kamala Harris would have made her the first female president. Instead, Trump will be the first user convicted of a crime to assume the presidency of the United States.
The president-elect was convicted last week of attempting to conceal a cash payment to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign.
He was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records for election fraud in May of last year. He continues to deny the allegations and call the matter a “witch hunt. “
Mr Trump, who will be inaugurated as president on 20 January, was also embroiled in other state and federal criminal cases, as well as some civil cases.
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him and said the accusation is politically motivated.
With his election victory, most instances have been ignored or upheld, but what will happen to Trump’s legal battles once he returns to the White House?
“Silencing the money” – state case
This is the case of Stormy Daniels, whom Trump found guilty of covering up the $130,000 payment made through her then-lawyer for her silence before the 2016 election, about a sexual encounter they claimed to have had a decade earlier. .
While he may have faced up to 4 years in prison, Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchán gave the president-elect a non-penalty sentence, also known as absolute release.
Under New York state law, an unconditional discharge is a sentence imposed “without imprisonment, fine or probation supervision”.
The sentence is pronounced when a ruling “considers that it would be unnecessary to impose any conditions on the defendant’s release,” according to the law.
Read more: Trump escaped from prison or a fine, as it happened
This means Trump’s hush money case has been resolved without sanctions that could interfere with his return to the White House, but it does mean he will be the first president to be sworn in as a convicted felon.
In his videoconference appearance before the court, the president-elect claimed that the process against him was a “political witch hunt” and said: “I have been treated very unfairly and thank you very much. “
Electoral Subversion – Federal Case
Donald Trump has also been accused of opposing his defeat in the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
He had pleaded guilty to the felons’ fees, charging him with conspiracy to obstruct the procedure for collecting and certifying results.
He also accused of engaging in “dishonesty, fraud and deception” and spreading “widespread and destabilizing lies about electoral fraud. ”
But in July of last year, the Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, granted former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution after the president-elect’s arguments that he simply could not be prosecuted for official moves during his term in office. White House.
The ruling all but ended Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election subversion case against Mr Trump, and after the Republican’s election win in November, prosecutors filed to drop the charges.
In January, despite Trump’s attempt to block it, a report surfaced through Smith about fees released through the Justice Department, which said the president-elect had engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn his election loss from 2020.
The prosecutor said Trump “inspired his followers to commit acts of physical violence” in the Jan. 6 riot and knowingly spread a false narrative about fraud in the 2020 election.
In response, Mr. Trump and Mr. Smith “upset” and criticized the report’s “false conclusions. ”
Electoral interference – state case
Trump was officially imprisoned in the Fulton County, Georgia, jail in August 2023, accused of an alleged plot to overturn his defeat, particularly in that battleground state in the 2020 elections.
The election result in Georgia that year was memorably close, triggering two recounts, but ultimately Mr Biden won by 11,779 votes – or 0.23% of the five million cast.
He qualified through Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger. But Trump was not satisfied with the result.
Prosecutors used the state’s racketeering laws, developed to combat organized crime, to charge him and others, his former attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Trump has pleaded guilty (along with 8 of his 14 co-defendants, including former mayor and New York lawyer Rudy Giuliani) and views the case well.
Although this case is technically still ongoing, it is largely on hold.
The case faced several upheavals after the president-elect’s lawyers attempted to disqualify the lead prosecutor, Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis, alleging alleged misconduct related to her previous relationship with attorney Nathan Wade.
Willis was barred from prosecuting through an appeals court in December. She filed an appeal this month.
Under state law, if a district attorney is disqualified, their office is as well.
The case is then sent to the executive director of the Georgia Council of Prosecutors, who will have to locate another prosecutor, a procedure that can take years.
The court will also have to determine whether a state prosecutor can prosecute a sitting president once proceedings resume.
As of this writing, Judge Scott McAffe has also dismissed five of the thirteen charges against the president-elect.
Misuse of classified documents – federal case
In special counsel Jack Smith’s second case against the president-elect, Trump had also been charged over classified documents he allegedly stole from the White House, adding that he deleted CCTV footage of his moving boxes from his Florida home.
However, a ruling dismissed the charges against him on July 15.
Some of the documents contained details about U. S. nuclear weapons programs, the vulnerabilities of the country and its allies and plans for retaliatory military strikes, according to the federal indictment.
Prosecutors had appealed the decision, but an appeals court agreed to uphold the dismissal in November.
Smith then resigned from the Justice Department in January after filing his report in the election interference case.
Civil Affairs
Trump also looks attractive in the face of several civil litigations totaling more than $500 million (about £388 million), which will be affected by his victory.
These come with a civil fraud case in New York state and lawsuits filed through E Jean Carroll, who sued him for allegedly sexually assaulting her in the 1990s and defaming her when he was first president.
On 30 December, a federal appeals court upheld the $5m award that the Manhattan jury granted to the writer for defamation and sexual abuse.
A second jury, which awarded Ms. Carroll another $83. 3 million in damages for comments Mr. Trump made about her when he was president, was told in the ruling to accept the first jury’s decision that Trump had sexually abused the author. the verdict is still nice
Trump also faces 8 pending civil lawsuits similar to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, following his allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
No trial date has been set, but with appeals it could take months or longer to determine, NBC, Sky’s US marital network, reports.
Can Trump pardon himself?
Once both federal instances have been dismissed, the president-elect does want to pardon himself.
Sky News US correspondent James Matthews said after Sanchez’s Trump victory in November that such a move is within the president’s power, although self-pardon has never been legally tested.
The pardon issue does not apply to state affairs, the president-elect can only be pardoned after the conviction of New York Governor Kathy Hocul, a Democrat.
Matthews noted, however, in November that Trump’s conviction and prosecution in cases, such as the Georgia case, had been weakened by the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of immunity.
“Nor can evidence of official acts be used as evidence for the prosecution of a crime committed outside the line of duty,” the correspondent said.
He then said to “expect Trump’s lawyers to point to evidence used to convict him – phone calls and behaviour while in the role of president – and claim it relates to official acts and, under the Supreme Court ruling, should be ruled inadmissible”.
If the now-suspended Georgian case were to be resumed, prosecutors would have a hard time bringing charges against him.