Former US president Donald Trump has denied all wrongdoing
Former US president Donald Trump is facing four criminal indictments and a series of potential trials as he campaigns in the 2024 White House race.
In a split-screen that underlined the extent of his legal woes, the Republican frontrunner was in a New York court Thursday to hear the date set for his trial on alleged campaign finance violations as his lawyers attended another hearing in Atlanta in his state prosecution for election fraud and racketeering.
The first former US president to face criminal charges, Trump's most serious immediate threat comes from federal prosecutors alleging that he led a criminal conspiracy to steal the 2020 election.
The twice impeached Republican is also federally indicted over his handling of classified documents.
Any one of the cases could result in jail time, with experts agreeing that convictions in Trump's federal trials and the Atlanta case pose the biggest threat to his liberty.
Here are the key cases involving the 77-year-old one-term president:
- Stormy Daniels hush money -
On Thursday, a judge set March 25 for the start of jury selection in Trump's trial in New York on charges of covering up hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels – the first criminal trial of a former US president.
Trump is facing 34 felony counts of accounting fraud linked to the payments.
Late in the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen arranged a payment of $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels in what prosecutors say was an exchange for her pledge of confidentiality over an alleged affair
Prosecutors say the money was paid prior to the 2016 election to silence Daniels over claims she had a tryst with Trump in 2006 – a year after he married Melania Trump.
Late in the campaign, Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen arranged a payment of $130,000 to Daniels in exchange for her pledge of confidentiality, prosecutors said.
This case is seen as the most contentious as this kind of false accounting would normally be a misdemeanor. Prosecutors bumped each count up to a felony by claiming that since Trump was running for election and trying to cover up a scandal, the payments were felony campaign finance violations.
Trump's team may seek to persuade the jury that Trump would have sought to avoid scandal regardless of whether or not he was in an election campaign.
- Georgia election interference -
Trump stands accused in Georgia of pressuring state officials to overturn Joe Biden's election victory – incidents that were also referenced in a federal indictment covering some of the same ground.
Evidence includes a taped phone call in which he asked Georgia's secretary of state to “find” enough votes to reverse the result.
Fulton County's top prosecutor Fani Willis charged Trump with 13 felony counts including violating Georgia's anti-racketeering laws, as well as six conspiracy counts over alleged efforts to commit forgery, impersonate a public official and submit false statements and documents.
Eighteen codefendants also were indicted, including Trump's former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, for pressuring local legislators over the result after the election, and Trump's White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
Trump and several other codefendants have asked Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to disqualify Willis and throw out the case, however, following revelations she had a romantic relationship with the man she hired as a special prosecutor in the case.
McAfee was hearing from the defendants' lawyers at a hearing Thursday that is expected to wrap by the end of the week.
- 2020 election interference -
Federal prosecutors have obtained convictions or guilty pleas from hundreds of Trump supporters for participating in the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol
Special Counsel Jack Smith has slapped Trump with four federal felony charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
He is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, as well as conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of an official proceeding – the January 6, 2021, meeting of a joint session of Congress held to certify Biden's victory.
He is also charged with conspiracy to deny Americans the right to vote and to have their votes counted.
The indictment mentions six coconspirators but Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is the only named defendant.
His supporters stormed the US Capitol in a deadly attack that started after Trump delivered a fiery speech urging the crowd to “fight like hell.”
The case was initially scheduled to go ahead on March 4 but is frozen while the Supreme Court – America's highest legal tribunal – decides whether or not to weigh in on Trump's unprecedented claim that US presidents can break the law with impunity and never face prosecution.
- Classified documents -
A photo attached to one of the indictments of Donald Trump shows stacks of boxes – allegedly containing classified material – in a bathroom at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida
Trump, in another indictment brought by Smith, is accused of endangering national security by holding onto top secret nuclear and defense documents after leaving the White House.
Trump kept the files – which included records from the Pentagon, CIA and bokep indo National Security Agency – unsecured at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and thwarted official efforts to retrieve them, according to the indictment.
Trump was initially charged with 31 counts of “willful retention of national defense information,” each punishable by up to 10 years in prison. A count was added related to a classified document “concerning military activity in a foreign country.”
He also faces charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice, making false statements and other offenses.
The federal judge in the case has set a trial date of May 20 – the height of the presidential campaign. But she has been accused by Trump's opponents, as well as multiple judicial experts, of allowing the defense unduly to drag out proceedings.
- Other probes -
Trump was found liable in a civil case for sexually abusing and defaming a former magazine columnist, E. Jean Carroll, in 1996, and ordered to pay her $88 million in damages.
In New York, state attorney general Letitia James led a civil suit against Trump and two of his children, accusing them of fraud by overvaluing assets to secure loans and then undervaluing them to minimize taxes.
James is seeking $370 million in penalties as well as banning Trump and his children from serving as executives at companies in the city.
Judge Arthur Engoron is expected to release his ruling on Friday.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing in every case.