What all is Donald Trump legal problems with right now? The most severe cases include two criminal investigations, one for possible election interference and the other for alleged financial crimes. Meanwhile, political analysis is considering recommending criminal charges over Trump’s role on January 6, 2021, attack on Congress. As Donald Trumpcontemplates presidential retaliation in 2024, here are court cases that could jeopardize those ambitions.
US Capitol riot
Donald Trumpp has been accused of inciting an “insurrection” when his supporters sacked the Capitol and members of Congress confirmed Joe Biden’s victory on the January 6, 2021, election.
In the weeks prior, he had made unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud, which he repeated at a demonstration at the Washington Trade Center shortly before the riots. Soon after that, he was acquitted in a Republican-controlled Senate political trial, and his supporters declared victory. But this is not the end.
Last July, Democrat politicians and some Republicans formed a January 6 committee looking into Trump’s actions in detail. That day, he received thousands of messages from the White House and to the White House.
While the committee does not have the legal authority to prosecute Trump, it can refer criminal charges to the U.S. government’s chief attorney, Attorney General Merrick Garland. There were hints that the committee might have done just that in a recent court case involving his lawyer’s release of emails.
The Democratic judge said it was “probable” that Donald Trump committed the crimes reported by the committee. These crimes include obstruction of the vote in Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States by overturning an election, both of which can be punishable by fines or imprisonment.
An interim report on the committee’s findings, expected in June, could increase pressure on the attorney general to take action. However, proving the crimes reported by the committee would be complex and politically contentious. No former president has ever been tried.
Even if the conviction had been handed down, “it would likely have been overturned in the absence of new evidence demonstrating an active role in planning or facilitating the riot,” says criminal defence attorney Jonathan Turley, who was called by the Republicans to testify at the hearing. Impeachment. The most significant danger, he said, could come from Donald Trump’s reaction to the investigation if, for example, evidence is destroyed or false claims are made. “These are often the most vexing topics in Washington scandals, but we have not yet seen such accusations against Trump,” Turley said.
Election interference
A few days before the storming of Congress, a senior Georgia election official received an unusual phone call. “I just want 11,780 votes,” an excited Trump told Georgian Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The votes would give Trump a win in a critical 2020 swing state.
Claiming unfounded electoral fraud, Trump suggested that such an outcome was possible if Raffensperger could “revise” the result. “We believe our numbers are correct,” Raffensperger said. Fulton County, Georgia’s Attorney General Fanny Willis has launched an investigation into potential election crimes in the state, punishable by fines or jail time. Mr Trump views the case as a “witch hunt”, but his appeal to Mr Raffensperger could be “a compromising statement,” said Barbara McQuaid, a law professor at Michigan.
However, prosecutors had to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Trump was aware of his actions as a fraud. The judges accepted the request to open a special grand jury to see if there was any evidence of this. A grand jury is a group of citizens who have been given legal authority to collect evidence and testimonies. But so far, “little evidence has been offered other than the call itself,” Professor Turley said. Turley believes that “Donald Trump’s biggest threat has always been tax and banking fraud accusations in New York.”
Financial affairs
For more than two years since 2019, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and his team have been scrutinizing Trump’s finances for possible crimes. These alleged offences included overvaluing assets to obtain loans, a type of fraud that can lead to jail time. For prosecutors, getting Trump’s tax returns and indicting his company’s chief financial officer for tax fraud were significant revelations.
Then, at the end of 2021, Mr Vance left office and was replaced by fellow Democrat Alvin Bragg. To move forward, the two investigating prosecutors, Carey Dunn and Mark Pomeranz tried to convince their new boss that they had enough evidence to file a criminal case. He disagreed, the prosecutors resigned, and the investigation was suspended. Their team “had no doubt that [Mr. Trump] committed crimes — he did,” Pomeranz wrote in his resignation letter to Mr Bragg. Show Source Texts
Trump vehemently denies these alleged crimes. If Mr Bragg ever files a complaint, he should do it right because “the justice system will be on display,” says Daniel R. Alonso, a former New York State Attorney. To complicate matters, some of the allegations from the Vance investigation were reviewed by the New York Attorney General as part of a separate civil investigation launched in 2019. Trump was ridiculed this week by a judge for failing to hand over documents to investigators.
Sexual misconduct
“She’s not my type,” Trump said in response to accusations of sexually assaulting a reporter in the 1990s. This was in 2019, days after E. Jean Carroll made the accusations. She later sued Trump for calling her a liar.
White House records
When Trump left the White House, he took boxes of records to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Deleting official documents may constitute a criminal offence under the Presidential Documents Act. Presidential historian Lindsay Czerwinski said record-keeping could hold presidents accountable for their actions. But he said enforcing the Presidential Records Act was “difficult” because the law requires presidents to have “good faith” to keep their records.
