Trump Facing Array of Criminal, Civil Cases in Next Year
But in the next year, Trump could be spending weeks in courtrooms defending himself against an array of criminal and civil charges rather than being on the campaign trail, trying to convince voters he deserves another four-year term in the White House.
He is the first U.S. leader, in or out of office, to face criminal charges that could, if he is convicted, send him to prison for years.
He has denied all wrongdoing.
Here are the charges he is facing or could face:
- Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith has indicted Trump twice.
On Tuesday, a federal grand jury in Washington handed up a four-count indictment accusing Trump of illegally conspiring to upend his loss to Democrat Joe Biden and foment the January 6, 2021, riot by Trump supporters, who stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to block Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote count showing Biden had won.
With the case just filed, no trial date has been set.
- Smith has also accused Trump in a 40-count indictment of illegally retaining highly classified national security documents at his oceanside Mar-a-Lago estate in the southern state of Florida. He was required by U.S. law to turn the documents over to the National Archives when he left office in early 2021.
The indictment alleges, among other claims, that Trump conspired with a personal aide and the Mar-a-Lago property manager to erase security camera footage of workers moving boxes of the documents in and out of a storage room at the resort residence, an effort to hide the documents from federal investigators who had subpoenaed them.
A trial in the case is set for May 2024.
- In a narrower criminal probe, a state prosecutor in Atlanta, Fani Willis, is investigating Trump's role in trying to overturn his loss to Biden in the southern state of Georgia. Willis has signaled that she could bring charges in the case in the coming days.
In a recorded conversation days ahead of the congressional certification of Biden's victory, Trump pleaded with Georgia state elections chief Brad Raffensperger and other election officials to "find" him 11,780 votes, one more than Biden won by so Trump could claim the state’s 16 electoral votes.
"The people of Georgia are angry. The people in the country are angry," Trump said in the call to the Georgia officials. "And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated."
- In New York, a state prosecutor has secured an indictment alleging that Trump falsified business records at his Trump Organization real estate conglomerate to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn film star ahead of Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign to silence her claim of a one-night tryst with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the affair and the allegations of criminality.
A trial in this case is set for late March 2024.
Trump also faces two civil trials in the coming months.
- In a civil inquiry that centers on events related to Trump's real estate business empire, New York state Attorney General Letitia James has accused Trump of lying to lenders and insurers about the value of his properties.
She is seeking to bar Trump, along with his sons Donald Jr. and Eric and his daughter Ivanka, from continuing to run a business in New York. A New York judge declined in January to dismiss James' suit, and a trial is scheduled for October.
- In a recent civil case, Trump was ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, $5 million for sexually abusing her in a New York department store incident three decades ago.
Trump has disparaged her claim, and she filed a defamation suit against him that is scheduled for trial in January.
Unless he decides to show up, to testify or watch the proceedings, Trump may not have to sit through the civil cases, but he almost certainly would have to appear in court for the criminal cases.