In the months leading up to the 2024 presidential election, legal experts had made clear that if Donald Trump were to win a second White House term, his legal troubles would all but evaporate.
On Monday, the New York judge in his hush money trial — the one criminal case against Trump in which a jury has already handed down a guilty verdict — postponed his decision on whether to reverse the conviction in light of Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.
Here’s a rundown of where that case and the others filed against the president-elect now stand.
New York hush money
In May, Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony when a New York City jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
Sentencing in that case had been set for Nov. 26, but Trump’s lawyers had argued that the conviction should be nullified given the Supreme Court’s July ruling that presidents are immune from prosecution for “official acts” carried out while in office. Because Manhattan prosecutors used evidence obtained from the Trump White House to make their case, Trump’s lawyers told the judge, the verdict should not be allowed to stand.
Judge Juan Merchan was scheduled to issue his ruling on the Supreme Court immunity question on Tuesday but, citing Trump’s election win, he delayed that decision until Nov. 19.
Trump’s lawyers have also argued that the conviction should be tossed “to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern.”
In an email to Merchan, prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office agreed that “these are unprecedented circumstances,” and the judge has asked them to suggest a path forward.
Even in the event that Merchan allows Trump’s conviction to stand, it is all but certain that he will not, as a first-time offender and a newly reelected president, be sentenced to jail time in the case.
Jan. 6 election interference
In the waning days of the 2024 election, Trump was asked if he planned to fire special counsel Jack Smith if he was reelected.
“We got immunity at the Supreme Court. It’s so easy. I would fire him within two seconds. He’ll be one of the first things addressed,” Trump told interviewer Hugh Hewitt.
Appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Smith brought four felony counts against Trump stemming from his attempts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. While the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity delayed the trial, Smith recast his case and secured a second grand jury indictment against Trump tailored to withstand another immunity challenge.
But last week, following Trump’s election victory, Smith filed a motion with Judge Tanya Chutkan saying the government “respectfully requests that the Court vacate the remaining deadlines in the pretrial schedule to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance.” Chutkan agreed. That pause is seen as the first step by Smith to wind down the case against Trump.
As with the hush money case, the judge asked prosecutors to file a status report “indicating its proposed course for this case going forward.” Smith’s team now has until Dec. 2 to do so.
Once he is sworn in, Trump can simply order his attorney general to remove Smith from the case, all but ensuring that it will never make it before a jury.
Classified documents
The other federal case brought against Trump by Smith concerns his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021. But Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the case in July, finding that Smith’s appointment by Garland was unconstitutional.
In August, Smith appealed Cannon’s ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, writing, “Congress has granted the Attorney General not only the power to appoint special counsels, but discretion to determine how much independence to give them.”
With Trump returning to power, however, Trump can easily make the case vanish.
“He can instruct the Justice Department to not even bother with the appeal,” NBC News legal analyst Danny Cevallos told the network, adding, “The federal cases are going to go away.”
Georgia election interference
Trump faces eight felony counts in the Georgia election interference case that involves his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden in the key swing state. While four of Trump’s original 18 co-defendants charged have pleaded guilty in the case, the remaining 14, including Trump, still could end up going to trial.
But lawyers for the remaining defendants have appealed Judge Scott McAfee’s ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue prosecuting the case, further delaying the start of Trump’s trial. If their efforts to boot Willis from the case are successful, a new prosecutor could take it up again, though that is far from a certainty in such a complex case.
Trump’s lawyers have also signaled that his election victory means that they will ask the court to delay the case from going to trial until after he leaves office, and, as with the Jan. 6 case, that they will again challenge it on the grounds that presidential immunity protects him from prosecution.
Does that mean Trump will never set foot in a Georgia courtroom in this matter? No. But it does look as though the chances of that happening over the next four years are slim to none.
