Washington: Here is a list of legal troubles facing former U.S. President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Trump, 77, denies any wrongdoing.
JAN. 6 AND THE U.S. CAPITOL ATTACK
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is investigating Trump’s role in actions surrounding his loss in the 2020 presidential election that culminated in Trump’s supporters’ deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump said his attorneys met on Thursday with U.S. Justice Department officials, in a sign charges could come soon.
Trump said on his Truth Social platform that the Department of Justice had not told his attorneys when action was likely.
Officials have testified that during his final months in office, Trump pressured them with false voter fraud claims.
The federal probe is also examining a plot to submit phony slates of electors to block U.S. lawmakers from certifying Biden’s victory
Smith accuses Trump of risking national secrets by taking thousands of sensitive papers with him when he left the White House in January 2021 and storing them in a haphazard manner at his Mar-a-Lago Florida estate and his New Jersey golf club, according to the indictment.
Photos included in the indictment show boxes of documents stored on a ballroom stage, in a bathroom and strewn across a storage-room floor.
Those records included information about the secretive U.S. nuclear program and potential vulnerabilities in the event of an attack, the indictment said.
Trump faces charges that include violations of the Espionage Act, which criminalizes unauthorized possession of defense information, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
On Thursday, prosecutors unveiled a new indictment, which charges Trump, his co-defendant and valet Walt Nauta, and a third Trump employee, Carlos De Oliveira, with attempting to delete security camera footage at Mar-a-Lago after they were sent a grand jury subpoena for the videos in June 2022.
Prosecutors allege De Oliveira told another employee that “the boss” wanted a server containing security footage to be deleted.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating whether Trump and others tried illegally to overturn his defeat in that state’s 2020 presidential vote. A charging decision in the criminal case is expected by Sept. 1.
The investigation focuses in part on a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call Trump made to Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to “find” enough votes needed to overturn Trump’s loss in Georgia.
Legal experts said Trump may have violated at least three Georgia criminal laws: conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and intentional interference with performance of election duties.
Trump could argue that his discussions were free speech protected by the U.S. Constitution.
A New York grand jury indicted Trump for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with a hush-money payment to a porn star before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump in 2006. Prosecutors in Manhattan accuse Trump of trying to conceal a violation of election laws.
Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records. He has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels but admitted to reimbursing Cohen for his payment to her.
Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other crimes and was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 during Trump’s presidency.
The trial is scheduled for March 25, 2024.
Trump is appealing a $5 million verdict by a Manhattan federal jury that found him liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s and then defaming her by lying about it in 2022.
Carroll is seeking at least $10 million more in a separate defamation lawsuit she amended after Trump blasted the verdict on CNN and on his social media platform. He has denied meeting Carroll and accused her of making up her allegations.
