The Cases Against Trump: A Guide
9 min read
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Donald Trump’s luck in the courts has turned.
Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony when a jury in Manhattan found him guilty of 34 counts in May. That followed decisive and costly losses in civil cases: Trump was fined more than half a billion dollars when courts found that he had defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll and committed financial fraud in his business.
Since then, Trump has won a string of victories, and the three remaining criminal cases against him seem deeply bogged down. A Supreme Court decision on July 1 threw into limbo the federal case against him for attempting to subvert the 2020 election. The justices ruled that a president is immune from prosecution for any “official” actions, and found that some of the allegations concerned official actions. Special Counsel Jack Smith has now refiled charges.
Two weeks later, Trump won another long-shot victory when Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed charges against him for hoarding classified documents in his residence at Mar-a-Lago. She concluded that Smith’s appointment was not constitutional. The decision has been appealed.
Meanwhile, criminal charges related to election subversion in Fulton County, Georgia, are indefinitely delayed amid litigation over whether Fani Willis, the prosecutor in that case, should be removed.
All of this means that Trump heads toward the election as a convicted felon and with three serious cases hanging over his head, but it also means that he will not go on trial again before the election. That spares him time in court and deprives voters of a chance to know whether he committed many grave crimes. If Trump wins, many anticipate that he will direct the Justice Department to dismiss the federal charges against him.
Here’s a summary of the major legal cases against Trump, including key dates, assessments of the gravity of the charges, and expectations about how they could turn out. This guide will be updated regularly as the cases proceed.
New York State: Fraud
In the fall of 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil suit against Trump, his adult sons, and his former aide Allen Weisselberg, alleging a years-long scheme in which Trump fraudulently reported the value of properties in order to either lower his tax bill or improve the terms of his loans, all with an eye toward inflating his net worth.
When?
Justice Arthur Engoron ruled on February 16 that Trump must pay $355 million plus interest, the calculated size of his ill-gotten gains from fraud. The judge had previously ruled against Trump and his co-defendants in late September 2023, concluding that many of the defendants’ claims were “clearly” fraudulent—so clearly that he didn’t need a trial to hear them.
How grave was the allegation?
Fraud is fraud, and in this case, the sum of the fraud stretched into the hundreds of millions—but compared with some of the other legal matters in which Trump is embroiled, this is a little pedestrian. The case was also civil rather than criminal. But although the stakes are lower for the nation, they remain high for Trump: The size of the penalty appears to be larger than Trump can easily pay, and he also faces a three-year ban on operating his company.
What happens now?
Trump has appealed the case. On March 25, the day he was supposed to post bond, an appeals court reduced the amount he must post from more than $464 million to $175 million. A hearing on his appeal been scheduled for September 26.
Manhattan: Defamation and Sexual Assault
Although these other cases are all brought by government entities, Trump also faced a pair of defamation suits from the writer E. Jean Carroll, who said that Trump sexually assaulted her in a department-store dressing room in the 1990s. When he denied it, she sued him for defamation and later added a battery claim.
When?
In May 2023, a jury concluded that Trump had sexually assaulted and defamed Carroll, and awarded her $5 million. A second defamation case produced an $83.3 million judgment in January 2024.
How grave was the allegation?
Although these cases didn’t directly connect to the same fundamental issues of rule of law and democratic governance that some of the criminal cases do, they were a serious matter, and a federal judge’s blunt statement that Trump raped Carroll has gone underappreciated.
What happens now?
Trump has appealed both cases, and he posted bond for the $83.3 million in March. During the second trial, he also continued to insult Carroll, which may have courted additional defamation suits.
Manhattan: Hush Money
In March 2023, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg became the first prosecutor to bring felony charges against Trump, alleging that the former president falsified business records as part of a scheme to pay hush money to women who said they’d had sexual relationships with Trump.
When?
The trial began on April 15 and ended with a May 30 conviction. A judge is scheduled to rule September 16 on whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity invalidates the case. On September 6, he announced that he was postponing sentencing to avoid interfering with the election.
How grave was the allegation?
Many people have analogized this case to Al Capone’s conviction on tax evasion: It’s not that he didn’t deserve it, but it wasn’t really why he was an infamous villain. Trump did deserve it, and he’s now a convicted felon. Moreover, although the charges were about falsifying records, those records were falsified to keep information from the public as it voted in the 2016 election. It was among the first of Trump’s many attacks on fair elections. (His two impeachments were also for efforts to undermine the electoral process.) If at times this case felt more minor compared with the election-subversion or classified-documents cases, it’s because those other cases have set a grossly high standard for what constitutes gravity.
What happens now?
The next major step is sentencing on November 26.
Department of Justice: Mar-a-Lago Documents
Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with 37 felonies in connection with his removal of documents from the White House when he left office, but Judge Aileen Cannon has dismissed the case, finding that Smith’s appointment was not constitutional. Smith has appealed. The charges included willful retention of national-security information, obstruction of justice, withholding of documents, and false statements. Trump took boxes of documents to properties, where they were stored haphazardly, but the indictment centered on his refusal to give them back to the government despite repeated requests.
When?
Smith filed charges in June 2023. On July 15, 2024, Cannon dismissed the charges. Smith appealed that dismissal on August 26. He faces a de facto deadline of January 20, 2025, at which point Trump, if reelected, would likely shut down a case.
How grave is the allegation?
These are, I have written, the stupidest crimes imaginable, but they are nevertheless very serious. Protecting the nation’s secrets is one of the greatest responsibilities of any public official with classified clearance, and not only did Trump put these documents at risk, but he also (allegedly) refused to comply with a subpoena, tried to hide the documents, and lied to the government through his attorneys.
How plausible is a guilty verdict?
That will depend on both the appeals court and the election. This once looked to be the most open-and-shut case: The facts and legal theory here are pretty straightforward. But Smith drew a short straw when he was randomly assigned Cannon, a Trump appointee who repeatedly ruled favorably for Trump and bogged the case down in endless pretrial arguments. Even before her dismissal of the case, some legal commentators accused her of “sabotaging” it.
Fulton County: Election Subversion
In Fulton County, Georgia, which includes most of Atlanta, District Attorney Fani Willis brought a huge racketeering case against Trump and 18 others, alleging a conspiracy that spread across weeks and states with the aim of stealing the 2020 election.
When?
Willis obtained the indictment in August 2023. The number of people charged makes the case unwieldy and difficult to track. Several of them, including Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, struck plea deals in the fall. Because a challenge to Willis’s presence on the case isn’t going to be heard until December, the case will not begin before the election.
How grave is the allegation?
More than any other case, this one attempts to reckon with the full breadth of the assault on democracy following the 2020 election.
How plausible is a guilty verdict?
Expert views differ. This is a huge case for a local prosecutor, even in a county as large as Fulton, to bring. The racketeering law allows Willis to sweep in a great deal of material, and she has some strong evidence—such as a call in which Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” some 11,000 votes. Three major plea deals from co-defendants may also ease Willis’s path, but getting a jury to convict Trump will still be a challenge. The case has also been hurt by the revelation of a romantic relationship between Willis and an attorney she hired as a special prosecutor. On March 15, Judge Scott McAfee declined to throw out the indictment, but he sharply castigated Willis.
Department of Justice: Election Subversion
Special Counsel Smith has also charged Trump with four federal felonies in connection with his attempt to remain in power after losing the 2020 election. This case is in court in Washington, D.C.
When?
A grand jury indicted Trump on August 1, 2023. The trial was originally scheduled for March but was frozen while the Supreme Court mulled whether the former president should be immune to prosecution. On July 1, 2024, the justices ruled that a president is immune from prosecution for official but not unofficial acts, finding that some of Trump’s postelection actions were official and sending the case back to the trial court to determine others. Smith obtained a new indictment on August 27, which retains the same four felony charges but omits references to corrupting the Justice Department. As with the other DOJ case, time is of the essence for Smith, because Trump, if reelected, could shut down a case upon taking office in January 2025.
How grave is the allegation?
This case rivals the Fulton County one in importance. It is narrower, focusing just on Trump and a few key elements of the paperwork coup, but the symbolic weight of the U.S. Justice Department prosecuting an attempt to subvert the American election system is heavy.
How plausible is a guilty verdict?
It’s very hard to say. Smith avoided some of the more unconventional potential charges, including aiding insurrection, and everyone watched much of the alleged crime unfold in public in real time, but no precedent exists for a case like this, with a defendant like this.
Additionally …
In more than 30 states, cases were filed over whether Trump should be thrown off the 2024 ballot under a novel legal theory about the Fourteenth Amendment. Proponents, including J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe in The Atlantic, argued that the former president is ineligible to serve again under a clause that disqualifies anyone who took an oath defending the Constitution and then subsequently participated in a rebellion or an insurrection. They said that Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election and his incitement of the January 6 riot meet the criteria.
When?
Authorities in several states ruled that Trump should be removed from the ballot, and the former president appealed to the Supreme Court. The justices ruled unanimously on March 4 that states could not remove Trump from the ballot. The conservative majority (over strenuous liberal objections) also closed the door on a postelection disqualification by Congress without specific legislation.
How grave is the allegation?
In a sense, the claim made here was even graver than the criminal election-subversion cases filed against Trump by the U.S. Department of Justice and in Fulton County, Georgia, because neither of those cases alleges insurrection or rebellion. But the stakes were also much different—rather than criminal conviction, they concern the ability to serve as president.
What happens next?
The question of disqualification seems to now be closed, with Trump set to appear on the ballot in every state.
