What is happening to Trump’s criminal and civil cases now that he has been re-elected

CNN
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Donald Trump has been re-elected to the White House as a convicted felon awaiting sentencing in his New York hush money case and still working to stave off prosecution in other state and federal cases.

It is an extremely unique position for him to be in: Never before has a criminal defendant been elected to the nation’s highest office, just as an ex-president had never been criminally charged until last year.

Trump has repeatedly said he plans to fire special counsel Jack Smith and drop the federal cases against him for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and mishandling classified documents.

“It clearly paid off to push aggressively to delay these cases as long as possible,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor of constitutional law at Loyola Law School.

Meanwhile, a judge in New York is set to sentence the former president later this month after holding off on handing down the sentence ahead of Election Day to avoid it appearing to influence the outcome of the presidential race – although Trump’s lawyers are expected to asking the judge to delay sentencing now that he is the president-elect.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Here’s what you need to know about the four criminal cases:

Trump is scheduled to appear in a New York courtroom on Nov. 26 to receive a sentence for his conviction earlier this year on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment made during the 2016 campaign to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, who alleged a past affair with the president-elect. (Trump denies the affair.)

Whether that sentencing takes place at all remains an open question.

Judge Juan Merchan has given himself a Nov. 12 deadline to decide whether to vacate the ruling because of the Supreme Court’s ruling this summer that grants a president some presidential immunity. If Merchan does, the charges would be dismissed and Trump would not be convicted.

But if the judge decides to keep the sentence intact, the former president’s lawyers are expected to ask Merchan to stay Trump’s sentence so they can appeal. And if it’s not granted, his lawyers plan to appeal the immunity ruling to state appeals courts and potentially all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to ask the courts to delay Trump’s sentencing until all appeals are exhausted, which could take months.

Should Merchan proceed with the sentencing, Trump could be ordered to serve as much as four years in prison, but the judge is not required to sentence the president-elect to prison and could impose a lesser sentence, such as probation. imprisonment, community service or a fine.

Any sentence, of course, will be complicated by the fact that Trump is set to take office on Jan. 20, 2025. Trump’s lawyers are likely to shape their appeals to raise constitutional questions challenging whether a state judge can sentence a president-elect, which could tie up the case by the courts for years.

Since it is a state matter, Trump does not have the power to pardon himself next year after he is sworn in.

Federal cases in DC and Florida

Trump’s election victory is poised to have the biggest impact on the two federal criminal cases brought against him by Smith in Washington, DC and Florida.

Since the cases were filed in 2023, Trump’s main legal strategy has been to delay the trials until after the election so that, if elected, he could fire Smith, leading to the end of the two cases. At the end of October, the former president said that he would take such a step without hesitation.

“Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy,” Trump said when asked by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt if he would “forgive yourself” or “fire Jack Smith” if re-elected.

“I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said.

Firing Smith would allow the Justice Department and Trump’s attorney general to move to drop the charges against him and end the trials.

But until opening day on Jan. 20, Smith has time to weigh his options against conditions the department has never had to confront before.

An early hurdle is whether the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel considers a president-elect to be subject to the same legal protections from prosecution as a sitting president. That guidance would determine the next course of action, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

More than half a dozen people close to the special counsel’s office or other top Justice Department officials told CNN they believe Smith doesn’t want to close up shop until ordered to or pushed out by Trump.

Under federal law, Smith must provide a confidential report on his office’s work to the attorney general before he leaves office.

In the DC case, Smith accused Trump of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. The case had stalled for months as Trump pushed federal courts to grant him presidential immunity, and in July the Supreme Court issued a historic ruling that said he had some immunity from criminal prosecution.

The federal judge overseeing the trial has decided how much of Trump’s conduct at the center of the case is protected by immunity after prosecutors last month presented their arguments why the ruling should have no impact on the case.

The charges filed by Smith against the Florida president-elect accuse Trump of illegally taking classified documents from the White House and resisting the government’s attempts to retrieve the materials. That case was thrown out in July by Judge Aileen Cannon, but prosecutors have appealed her ruling, which said Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Smith was unconstitutional.

The immediate fate of Trump’s criminal case in Georgia depends largely on whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, is disqualified from prosecuting the case because of her past romantic relationship with another prosecutor. But even if she is allowed to continue prosecuting Trump, the case would almost certainly be jeopardized now that he has been elected.

Criminal charges against Trump for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election are effectively on hold while the appeals court decides whether to disqualify Willis, a decision not expected until 2025.

If Willis is removed, sources told CNN they believe it is unlikely that another prosecutor will take up the case and that it will effectively go away.

Sources familiar with the case said it is unlikely that a state-level judge would allow the case to proceed when Trump is president, and in that scenario, Trump’s lawyers would certainly move to have the case dismissed.

There is no clear answer as to whether a state-level prosecutor like Willis can prosecute a sitting president. Trump’s victory now forces Willis to confront the constitutional question in addition to the existing legal questions that have already created uncertainty about the future of the Georgia case.

The former president is also defending himself in a number of civil lawsuits, including those related to his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, two E. Jean Carroll defamation cases and a civil fraud case brought by the New York attorney general in which Trump was ordered to pay nearly $454 million in damages.

In September, state and federal appeals courts in New York heard arguments on two of Trump’s civil appeals.

Trump lost two defamation cases against Carroll in 2023 and 2024 in federal court after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing the former columnist and subsequently defaming her. Two juries awarded Carroll $5 million and $83 million.

A federal appeals court heard Trump’s appeal to throw out the first Carroll conviction in September. The court has not yet made a decision.

Later this month, a state appeals court heard arguments in Trump’s effort to dismiss the $454 million civil fraud judgment against him, in which a judge found that he, his grown sons and his company fraudulently inflated the value of Trump’s assets to obtain a better loans and insurance rates.

The five-judge appeals court appeared open to at least lowering the fine levied against Trump, though it too has yet to rule. That decision can be appealed to New York’s highest court of appeals.

Trump also still faces civil lawsuits filed by Democratic lawmakers and others over his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

It’s possible that all of these cases will continue to play out even as Trump serves out his second term in the White House. In a 1997 Supreme Court ruling stemming from a civil lawsuit involving then-President Bill Clinton, the justices unanimously ruled that sitting presidents could not invoke presidential immunity to avoid civil lawsuits while in office.