A primer on Trump’s criminal trials
Editor’s note (September 23rd 2024): This article has been updated to take in the latest developments.
RUNNING FOR the American presidency is a full-time job. “There was essentially no day or night” from the first presidential debate in September 1976 to election day, griped James Fallows, now a journalist, who worked on Jimmy Carter’s campaign. Donald Trump, now sure of the Republican Party’s nomination for this year’s election, has had to combine that gruelling endeavour with his role as a criminal defendant. Eighty-eight felony charges were brought in all. He was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records on May 30th. It is now almost certain that the other trials, in which he faces graver charges, will not return verdicts before election day. So far, Mr Trump, who denies all the pending charges, has reconciled the roles of defendant and candidate by making his campaign largely about the cases against him. He rallies Republican support with his claims that he is the victim of a political witch-hunt. Whether most American voters will agree is uncertain—as is the effect of the Supreme Court’s ruling, on July 1st, that he is entitled to “presumptive immunity” for “official acts”. These are the prosecutions that await the former president.
Falsifying business records
Jurisdiction: Local—New York City, New York
Trial date: April 15th-May 30th 2024
The only case to have gone to trial so far has returned a guilty verdict: on May 30th, Mr Trump was convicted on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Chronologically, this indictment was the first to be brought; but in terms of significance, it is the least serious of the charges Mr Trump faces.
In March 2023 Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s top prosecutor, charged Mr Trump with falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels. On the eve of the presidential election in 2016 she threatened to go public about sleeping with Mr Trump. His lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid her off—and later pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations in connection with the payment. Mr Trump is accused of covering up his reimbursements to Mr Cohen by describing them as payments for legal services.
Falsifying business records is not a felony unless it furthers another crime. The case was legally complex. Prosecutors “stepped up” the misdemeanour by arguing that Mr Trump violated a New York state election law that criminalises conspiring to influence proceedings via unlawful means. The trial lasted about six weeks. On July 1st the Supreme Court handed Mr Trump a partial victory by ruling that presidents are entitled to “presumptive immunity” from prosecution for “official acts”. The judge in New York agreed to delay sentencing until after the election to avoid any suggestion that he was interfering with the race.
Election interference in Georgia
Jurisdiction: State—Fulton County, Georgia
Trial date: TBD
In the telling of Fani Willis, the prosecutor, Mr Trump was the boss of a criminal “enterprise” with one job: to change the result of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, a state he lost. On August 14th 2023 Ms Willis indicted Mr Trump on charges including racketeering. She used a statute designed to target the mafia to tie the 19 co-defendants together.
Their alleged offences vary: some defendants, known as the “fake electors”, are said to have submitted false paperwork to Congress claiming that Mr Trump had won Georgia. Others allegedly appealed to the state’s officials, urging them to overturn Mr Biden’s victory. Yet others reputedly harassed election workers and stole voting data. Ms Willis claims that Mr Trump unified and motivated their illegal acts. Central to the case will be a phone call from January 2021: in it, the then-president urged Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find 11,780 votes”—the exact number that he needed to win the state. Four defendants have so far taken plea deals and agreed to co-operate with the prosecution.
The case is tied up by a related dispute. In January one of Mr Trump’s co-defendants accused Ms Willis of having an affair with the prosecutor she hired to lead the investigation, arguing she should be disqualified. On March 15th the judge found that the relationship created the “appearance of impropriety” but no “conflict of interest”. The prosecutor recused himself from the case. In May, however, an appeals court agreed to review the judge’s decision, a process that will probably take months.
Election interference
Jurisdiction: Federal (Washington, DC)
Trial date: Originally scheduled for March 4th 2024, but delayed
Jack Smith’s indictment, alleging that Mr Trump tried to steal the 2020 presidential election, is the gravest case against the former president. Mr Smith, though appointed by Merrick Garland, America’s attorney-general, is an independent special prosecutor. That status is supposed to ensure that he has no political agenda, though of course Mr Trump’s supporters don’t accept that. On August 1st 2023 Mr Smith charged Mr Trump with conspiring to defraud the United States, obstructing an official proceeding (Congress’s certification of the electoral-college vote in favour of Mr Biden) and conspiring to deprive Americans of their right to have their votes counted. The indictment accuses Mr Trump of pulling the strings of fake electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin; leaning on the Department of Justice and the vice-president, Mike Pence, to carry out his “criminal scheme”; and exploiting the violence at the Capitol on January 6th 2021 to encourage lawmakers to delay certifying the vote.
This was the case that prompted Mr Trump’s lawyers to argue that he should be immune from prosecution for actions he took in office related to his official duties. Ex-presidents cannot be sued in civil court for such actions, and Mr Trump wants this “absolute presidential immunity” to be extended to the criminal realm. When the Supreme Court ruled on July 1st that presidents should receive at least “presumptive immunity” from prosecution for official acts, it asked a lower court to decide whether Mr Trump’s actions on and leading up to January 6th were truly “unofficial”.
In August Mr Smith brought a new indictment against Mr Trump. It preserved the four criminal charges of the original case, but whittled down the allegations and emphasised that some of Mr Trump’s conduct lay outside his “official responsibilities”. It is virtually impossible for the case to be resolved before November.
Mishandling classified documents
Jurisdiction: Federal (Florida)
Trial date: Dismissed by judge
On June 13th 2023, in a separate case brought by Mr Smith, Mr Trump was arraigned in a court in Florida on 37 charges in connection with his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House. The prosecutor brought most of the charges under the Espionage Act of 1917, which makes it a crime to hold secret government documents without authorisation. The former president is said to have retained records about America’s nuclear-weapons programme and other countries’ military capabilities. Mr Trump is also accused of obstructing investigators. On July 27th 2023 the prosecutors brought new charges, accusing him of attempting to destroy evidence.
They allege that the former president was aware that retaining and leaking secret papers was a serious crime; that he stashed them in insecure places and refused an order to hand them over; and that he bragged about their contents. The indictment claims that the documents were boxed up in various locations at Mar-a-Lago, the private club in Florida where Mr Trump lives. These include a ballroom, a shower and a storage room that the public could get to from the club’s pool patio.
On July 15th, Judge Aileen Cannon—whom Mr Trump nominated to the bench—dismissed the case on the grounds that Mr Smith’s appointment was unlawful because he was not nominated by the president or confirmed by the Senate. Mr Smith’s team appealed against the decision in August.
Even more trials
There are civil trials, too. In May 2023 a jury in Manhattan found Mr Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, an author, in the 1990s, and of later defaming her. On January 26th a different jury awarded her over $83m in damages. New York state has accused Mr Trump of inflating his net worth to secure better loans. The judge found Mr Trump liable for fraud before proceedings even kicked off, and on February 16th ordered him to pay $355m (plus interest) and barred him from holding a top job in a New York corporation for three years. The first civil trials did little to sway voters who favour Mr Trump. The full effects of the criminal ones remain to be seen. Thus far they have only bolstered his popularity among Republicans. ■