In a historic conviction on Thursday, a New York jury found former President Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the hush money case. For the first time in U.S. history, a former president has been declared a felon.
For Donald Trump, the typical politicking that goes along with a reelection bid will overlap with an ongoing – and packed – court calendar. Before Trump, no former U.S. president had ever been indicted — or convicted. He was charged with 88 felony counts across four criminal cases, as well as implicated in a pair of civil suits that could result in huge financial hits. On May 30, he was found guilty on all counts in his New York hush money case.
Trump has pleaded not guilty or denied wrongdoing in each of these cases, and his legal team has sought to dismiss, discredit or delay upcoming trials, including the case about 2020 election interference, which it hoped to move until after Election Day.
Those attempts by his lawyers include a bid to say Trump should be immune from prosecution because his actions or comments were part of his “official duties” when he was president. A federal appeals panel ruled on Feb. 6 that he is not immune, but the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in late April to consider the ruling, affecting the timing of the D.C. trial.
Trump was indicted on March 30, 2023, on charges of falsifying business records. These involved hush money payments made on Trump’s behalf to conceal alleged affairs ahead of the 2016 presidential election. On May 30, 2024, after a weekslong trial, a jury delivered a guilty verdict on all 34 felony counts, making Trump the first former president to be declared a felon.
Trump faced 34 felony counts in the hush money scheme that sought to silence allegations of extramarital affairs — including a $130,000 to Stephanie Clifford, the adult film actor known as Stormy Daniels— that surfaced during his first presidential campaign. The indictment detailed how the hush money payments, made by Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen, were recorded as legitimate business expenses.
Trump was indicted by a grand jury in the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Judge Merchan set Trump’s sentencing for July 11, days before the Republican National Convention and shortly after the first Biden-Trump presidential debate of the 2024 election.
During closing arguments, prosecutors said the criminal case against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is, at its core, “about a conspiracy and a cover-up.” Trump’s defense team urged jurors to acquit him of all charges because no laws were broken, adding that the prosecution’s case hinged on the testimony of Cohen, an ex-Trump fixer and witness they described as the “greatest liar of all time.”
The series of witnesses who testified in the weekslong Manhattan trial also included Daniels, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker and former White House communications director Hope Hicks.
Ahead of the trial, Trump’s lawyers argued for a further delay after new documents from a related federal investigation were disclosed during the discovery process. The judge was unmoved by the arguments for more time, and pushed back when Trump’s legal team accused Manhattan prosecutors of misconduct without providing proof.
“You are literally accusing the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the people involved in this case of prosecutorial misconduct and of trying to make me complicit in it,” said Merchan, who raised his voice a couple times at a pretrial hearing. “And you don’t have a single cite to support that position.”
Following the ruling, Trump called the case an act of “election interference.” Trump has denied all wrongdoing and said the charges are politically motivated. When his legal team sought to get the charges dismissed in October, the Manhattan district attorney’s office pushed back, saying the former president was using campaigning as a way to avoid consequences.
Trump has said that “because he is a current presidential candidate, the ordinary rules for criminal law and procedure should be applied differently here.” This argument, prosecutors wrote in a 99-page document, “is essentially an attempt to evade criminal responsibility” because he is “politically powerful.”
Another element in this case to watch: Whether Bragg’s office seeks to show there was intent to “commit or conceal” another crime with Trump’s actions, which would elevate the charges from misdemeanors to felonies. Prosecutors didn’t specify a secondary crime in the indictment, but it could relate to a federal election law violation, something Trump’s legal team has argued the district attorney’s office couldn’t pursue.
Trump was indicted on June 8, 2023, on charges of unlawfully hoarding national security documents after he left the White House and lying to FBI officials who sought to retrieve them from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Initially scheduled to begin May 20, it is currently delayed indefinitely.
Trump faces 41 federal felony charges related to the mishandling of classified documents, obstructing justice and making false statements, including three additional counts from a superseding indictment in late July 2023:
32 counts of willful retention of national defense information. Each charge relates to a separate classified document
Conspiracy to obstruct justice
4 charges related to withholding, concealing or scheming to conceal a document
False statements and representation
2 charges related to altering, destroying or attempting to mutilate an object
The indictment included photos of the stacked boxes containing the sensitive information inside different rooms of Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors said although tens of thousands of people visited the “active social club” in the months after Trump left office, he “nonetheless” stored the documents “in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, and office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.” Prosecutors accused Trump of having some boxes moved ahead of an agreed upon FBI visit to retrieve the documents and then asked staff to delete security camera footage that captured the move.
Special counsel Jack Smith and the Justice Department, with an indictment by a grand jury, brought the case. Trump personal aide Waltine Nauta faces eight charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira faces four charges.
The timing of this case has been a major sticking point. Federal prosecutors have accused Trump’s legal team of trying to “intentionally derail” the timing of this specific trial. Trump’s attorneys argued that they would need more time to prepare for the proceedings while the former president is facing three other criminal cases against him.
In her nine-page order rejecting a request from Trump’s legal team’s to move the trial date, Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, also acknowledged the challenges posed by the “unusually high volume” of evidence in the overlapping cases, and left herself the option to decide whether to push the trial back.
Cannon released an order on May 7 cancelling the start date of May 20. Trump’s ongoing trial in Manhattan over hush money payments would have overlapped, and several members of his legal team for the Florida case are also defending him in New York.
Cannon rejected prosecutors’ initial request for a gag order against Trump. In her formal rejection on May 28, the judge said prosecutors did not give Trump’s legal team adequate time to consider the matter, calling their efforts “wholly lacking in substance and professional courtesy.”
Federal prosecutors allege Trump’s actions leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2020, were targeted to obstruct the transition of power to President Joe Biden and overturn the results of the election. The trial start date is currently on hold, while Supreme Court justices consider Trump’s immunity claims.
Trump has been indicted on four charges:
Conspiracy to defraud the United States
Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding
Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding
Conspiracy against rights, specifically “the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted”
Only Trump has been charged in the federal indictment, though there are six unnamed co-conspirators — four attorneys, one DOJ official and one political consultant. Based on the indictment, five of the co-conspirators are believed to be Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro.
The case was brought by special counsel Jack Smith, with an indictment from a Washington grand jury. Trump’s lawyers asked federal judges to throw this case out, arguing the former president has immunity for all official acts conducted while in office. A district judge ruled Trump did not have immunity, and his lawyers appealed. Chutkan ordered in January that Smith not file any major new motions while the immunity matter was being considered.
Smith asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on the case but they declined. After a federal appeals panel has said that Trump does not have immunity from the charges, Trump’s appeal will now be heard by the Supreme Court.
The D.C. trial is on hold until justices issue a ruling. In the unsigned order released Feb. 28, the justices said they were not “expressing a view on the merits” of the case. Instead, they’re focused on the question of whether and to what extent a former president can “enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”
Trump’s lawyers are hoping a long appeals process might delay the trial date, potentially past the 2024 election.
Trump was indicted in August for allegedly participating in a wide-ranging effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. Prosecutors have proposed Aug. 5 as the trial start date.
Trump was originally indicted on 13 charges including racketeering, which is typically used to prosecute criminal organizations. On March 13, Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee dismissed three of the charges against Trump that involved solicitations of public officers to violate their oaths.
The other charges included:
Conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer
2 counts of conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree
2 counts of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings
Conspiracy to commit filing false documents
Filing false documents
2 counts of false statements and writings
Alongside Trump, prosecutors charged 18 co-conspirators. Four co-defendants have pleaded guilty, including Scott Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman, as well as Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis, three of Trump’s lawyers. Prosecutors also charged former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark in the indictment.
A grand jury indicted Trump and the others based on a case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, top prosecutor for the Georgia county that includes Atlanta. Trump was booked into jail in August, but paid his $200,000 bond and left later that day.
McAfee dismissed three of the counts against Trump in March, citing a lack of detail about the allegations. “They do not give the Defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently,” McAfee wrote. But he told Willis her office could seek a reindictment, giving her six months to submit the case again before a grand jury, regardless of the statute of limitations.
Willis has reached plea deals with four of the 18 other co-defendants, which is common in racketeering cases. Willis may look to secure other guilty pleas, in the hopes that testimony from other conspirators will help bolster the case against the former president.
Trump’s lawyers have asked a federal appeals court to dismiss the case, arguing that as a former president, he has immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts” he took while in office. His lawyers have filed various motions asking the judge to dismiss the case in an attempt to avoid the trial completely or delay it until after the 2024 election. In addition, one of Trump’s co-defendants filed a motion accusing Willis and case prosecutor Nathan Wade of having an improper relationship and mishandling money.
In a Feb. 2 court filing, Willis had acknowledged that she had a “personal relationship” with Wade, but said it would not impede her ability to prosecute Trump’s case. Earlier, Willis claimed that Wade’s estranged wife was “obstructing and interfering” in the case against Trump. Citing bank filings in the divorce case, the Washington Post reported that there was evidence that Wade paid for two flights with Willis.
Wade stepped down March 15 after McAfee ruled that, given the appearance of impropriety, either he or Willis would have to leave the case. The judge did not find that there was a conflict of interest. “As the case moves forward, reasonable members of the public could easily be left to wonder whether the financial exchanges have continued resulting in some form of benefit to the District Attorney, or even whether the romantic relationship has resumed,” McAfee wrote in his judgment.
Trump’s team appealed the verdict allowing Willis to stay on the case, and a hearing date for that case has been tentatively set for Oct. 4.
Source: Various sources
