One disgraced ex-president, four trials, six lawsuits: Inside Donald Trump’s legal troubles

Donald Trump has never been more vulnerable.

Without the privileges and prestige of the presidency to protect him, Mr Trump is facing serious lawsuits and criminal indictments across New York, Florida, Georgia and Washington.

Federal officials, local prosecutors and individuals are going after him for everything from his private conduct to his political maneuvering during the 2020 election.

If even one of these efforts proves successful, the US could see its first-ever former president behind bars.

What’s more, his campaign to return to the White House suffered arguably its most serious setback yet on 19 December 2023 when the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that he must be disqualified from running and should be removed from 2024 primary ballots in the state – an unprecedented order finding him constitutionally ineligible from holding office in light of his role in the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, a violation of the oath he swore as commander-in-chief.

The state of Maine duly followed suit on 28 December and Mr Trump’s team has pledged to appeal both rulings, which could spell the end of his candidacy should such a step fail and other states decide to act accordingly.

Here, The Independent explains each major case Mr Trump is facing.

An election conspiracy case in Georgia

On 14 August 2023, Mr Trump and 18 allies were charged in Georgia’s Fulton County for conspiring to subvert the state’s 2020 presidential election results.

Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis began investigating the former president shortly after he left office in 2021.

At the time, an infamous recording had just gone public of Mr Trump pressuring Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find” him the 11,780 votes he needed to win the state.

A grand jury empaneled by Ms Willis found that there was persuasive evidence that Mr Trump and 18 co-defendants, including high-profile lieutenants like Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, sought to tamper with the crucial swing state’s election results through various schemes like coercing local officials and attempting to send a slate of false electors to Washington for the final Electoral College certification process.

Mr Trump personally faces 13 charges, including for violating the state’s RICO organised crime statute, and could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. He has denied wrongdoing.

The ex-president surrendered to authorities in Fulton County on the evening of 24 August where he was booked, processed and, for the first time, photographed for a mug shot, which he has since begun using for promotional purposes, even selling “MugShot Edition” digitial trading cards.

Mr Trump and his co-defendants were due to face arraignment on 6 September but, on 31 August, he entered a not guilty plea and waived the necessity for it, a move to avoid appearing in court where the judge had already granted permission for cameras to film the proceedings.

Georgia officials have proposed a 5 August 2024 trial date, although Ms Willis has said she is “ready and willing” to bring it forward if need be to avoid clashes with other legal proceedings.

(Another) election conspiracy case in Washington DC

Just two weeks before the Georgia charges dropped, Mr Trump was indicted on federal charges in Washington, DC, for allegedly trying to overthrow the 2020 election.

The historic moment was the culmination of an investigation that began in November 2022 with the appointment of Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.

On 1 August 2023, a grand jury approved an indictment accusing Mr Trump of conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding and deprivation of civil rights under colour of law, the latter charge using a post-Civil War law designed to prosecute the Klu Klux Klan.

The four-count indictment alleges Mr Trump and his allies knew they lost the 2020 election but sought to cling onto power anyway.

They did so, according to federal prosecutors, by pressuring officials to ignore the popular vote, organising slates of illegitimate electors, conducting sham Justice Department investigations into state election counts, coercing then-US vice president Mike Pence to refuse to certify the legitimate election results at a joint session of Congress and then inspiring a mob of supporters to sack the US Capitol on 6 January, a date that now lives in infamy.

Mr Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges and claimed he was the victim of a political persecution, crying “witch hunt” as he did throughout the Mueller investigation into his alleged ties to Russia in 2018.

“This was never supposed to happen in America. This is the persecution of the person that’s leading by very, very substantial numbers in the Republican primary and leading [Joe] Biden by a lot so if you can’t beat them you persecute them or prosecute ‘em,” he raged on 3 August.

US district court judge Tanya Chutkan has set his trial date to begin on 4 March 2024 in Washington, DC, despite Mr Trump’s legal team arguing they need until 2026 before going to trial.

In December, Judge Chutkan temporarily paused the case, staying all deadlines to allow for the US Supreme Court to reach a verdict on whether the Trump team’s “presidential immunity” defence deserved to stand, an argument intended to shield him from all prosecution because of the sensitivity of his duties in the White House.

Special Counsel Smith urged the court to reach a conclusion on the matter as quickly as possible, prompting Mr Trump’s lawyers to liken him to Dr Seuss’s festive misanthrope The Grinch in its filings just prior to Christmas.

A classified documents case in Florida

The charges in Washington followed another special counsel prosecution by Mr Smith against Mr Trump in Florida.

On 8 June 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Mr Trump on 37 charges for allegedly retaining classified national security information after leaving the White House in January 2021 and then conspiring to obstruct justice and making false statements to federal officials when they sought to reclaim the documents.

Nearly two months later, on 28 July, federal prosecutors added three additional charges in the case, accusing Mr Trump and two employees at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, of attempting to delete security footage pertaining to the documents so that it could not be used in a future investigation as evidence.

The indictments allege Mr Trump recklessly handled sensitive materials he had privileged access to as president, storing classified files in the bathroom and shower at his Florida club.

Mr Trump was also recorded at one of his New Jersey properties in 2021 appearing to brag about possessing a “highly confidential” Pentagon document regarding hypothetical battle plans against Iran.

The former president pleaded not guilty in early August.

US district judge Aileen Cannon has set a trial date of 20 May 2024 and it has since been suggested that Mr Trump’s own plumber, maid and chauffeur could be asked to testify against him.

A New York ‘catch and kill’ scheme involving ‘hush money’, porn stars and tabloid newspapers

Mr Trump is also under scrutiny from local officials in New York.

On 30 March 2023, a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict the former president for allegedly falsifying business records relating to “hush money” payments he made to the porn star Stormy Daniels to prevent her from revealing an alleged extramarital affair they had had a decade earlier during the 2016 election.

Mr Trump faces 34 first-degree felony charges for allegedly working through his former attorney Michael Cohen and former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker to “catch and kill” embarrassing stories, passing out hundreds of thousands of dollars to silence allegations of affairs and a child born out of wedlock, then allegedly falsifying records to conceal the payments.

“We cannot allow New York businesses to manipulate their records to cover up criminal conduct,” Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who is leading the prosecution, said in a statement.

Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty to the indictment.

The trial will begin on 25 March 2024.

A finding that Trump sexually abused E Jean Carroll

The hush money payments case was not the only New York legal battle Mr Trump faced in 2023.

On 9 May, a Big Apple jury found him liable for the sexual abuse of E Jean Carroll.

The longtime Elle magazine columnist had first accused Mr Trump in 2019 of raping her in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York in 1996, which the then-president denied.

The journalist sued Mr Trump for defamation that year and the Justice Department temporarily defended him, claiming his comments were part of his duties as president, though it ceased his defence in 2023 after he returned to life as a private citizen.

Ms Carroll later added a sexual battery charge against Mr Trump under a new New York law allowing survivors of historic sexual abuse to sue their abusers even after the statute of limitations had expired.

The May verdict, which awarded Ms Carroll $5m, was not the end of the matter, however.

Though the jury found that Mr Trump was liable for sexually abusing Ms Carroll, it had not technically found that he had raped her.

In June, Mr Trump sued Ms Carroll for saying he had in fact raped her. But, in an order made public on 7 August, federal judge Lewis Kaplan dismissed the former president’s counterclaim, finding that the original verdict “establishes against him the substantial truth of Ms Carroll’s ‘rape’ accusations.”

The former president is appealing the $5m verdict, while Ms Carroll is suing him in a separate defamation action, after he criticised the original decision, denied ever having met her and accused her once again of fabricating the rape allegation.

A $250m ‘art of the steal’ in New York

New York attorney general Letitia James sued Mr Trump, his three eldest children and their family company, the Trump Organization, in September 2022, alleging they had produced fraudulent valuations of properties and of Mr Trump’s personal finances to extract lending and insurance benefits.

The bombshell suit, which Ms James said is an attempt to hold Mr Trump accountable for perfecting the “art of the steal”, seeks a $250m penalty and sanctions that would effectively bar the Trump Organization from doing business in New York ever again.

The corporation itself, as well as Donald and his sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, all deny wrongdoing.

Allegations against Mr Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump were dropped in June of 2023 in a New York appeals court.

In August, Ms James’s office said in a court filing the case was “ready for trial” and it duly began on 2 October, bringing in-court outbursts from Mr Trump, high-profile witness testimony and a series of gag orders after the lower Manhattan courthouse was flooded with death threats.

Finally, after 44 days across more than two months, final testimony was heard on 13 December and lawyers from both parties will now file their final briefs to the court by 5 January 2024 before closing arguments are heard on 11 January.

New York County Supreme Court judge Arthur Engoron has then said he plans to issue a final ruling before the end of the month.

Incitement, confidentiality and a pyramid scheme

And those cases are just the beginning, Mr Trump is also implicated in a host of other legal battles.

In January 2023, a case went to trial in a suit accusing Mr Trump and his eldest children of promoting a multi-level marketing scam called “The Celebrity Apprentice”.

Then in March, the Justice Department argued in federal appeals court that Mr Trump is not immune from a lawsuit by members of Congress and US Capitol Police officers accusing him of inciting the Capitol riot of January 6.

That led to DC district court judge Amit Mehta ruling on 2 January 2024 that a civil lawsuit filed against Mr Trump by the partner of a Capitol Police officer who died in the aftermath of that failed insurrection could proceed, but only in part.

Judge Mehta dismissed wrongful death and negligence counts against the former president in the case brought by Sandra Garza, partner of the late Brian Sicknick, but allowed her to continue with claims against him under Washington DC’s Survival Act.

Her lawyer said Ms Garza was pleased with the outcome and considering next steps.

On the same day, four anonymous plaintiffs brought a new civil case against the Republican, his adult children and the Trump Organization for allegedly duping investors into putting money into a failed video phone.

A trial was provisionally scheduled for 29 January 2024.

Another suit that remains ongoing is one brought by Mr Trump against his own niece, Mary Trump.

The former president has accused Ms Trump of breaching the confidentiality of a family estate settlement by collaborating with The New York Times on an expose into the former president’s taxes.

In May 2023, a judge dropped the newspaper from the suit, leaving Ms Trump to answer it alone.

One case that has concluded, however, is Mr Cohen’s case against Mr Trump alleging that he was arbitrarily sent back to prison from home confinement for speaking to the press and planning a tell-all book.

The case brought by the Republican’s former fixer was dismissed in November and rejected again by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan on 2 January 2024.

Crossed off the ballot in Colorado and Maine

As if all of the above were not bad enough for Mr Trump, Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled on 19 December that the former commander-in-chief must be disqualified from the 2024 ballot in the state – an unprecedented order finding him constitutionally ineligible from holding office over his engagement in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, enacted in the aftermath of the American Civil War, prohibits anyone who has sworn an oath to uphold the US Constitution and “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding public office.

The historic ruling from Colorado’s highest court was the first among any state supreme courts to consider the question of his or any other candidate’s eligibility. Three justices on the seven-member panel dissented with the narrow majority verdict.

“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” the court’s four-justice majority wrote in their order.

“We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

The state’s ruling is now paused until 4 January 2024, the day before the Colorado secretary of state’s deadline to certify the contents of the 2024 ballots, to allow for an appeal, which Mr Trump’s team was quick to say it intended to file as a matter of urgency.

Immediately after Christmas 2023, Maine secretary of state Shenna Bellows announced that the Pine Tree State would be following suit, writing in her ruling: “I am mindful that no secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment.

“I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”

Local Republicans and the Trump campaign again expressed outrage and the latter filed an appeal on 2 January 2024.

Ariana Baio and Joe Sommerlad contributed to this report