How much legal jeopardy is Donald Trump in?

DONALD TRUMP is facing, by some estimates, around 20 criminal investigations and civil lawsuits. The charges from these are adding up: on August 14th, after he was indicted in Georgia for trying to interfere in the state’s 2020 election proceedings, his cumulative felony-charge count numbered 91. (The former president has denied all allegations.) Mr Trump is now facing four prominent indictments: the one in Georgia; two brought by federal prosecutors, for attempting to overturn the election and for mishandling classified documents; and one in New York, related to a hush-money payments probe. What are the major inquiries involving Mr Trump—and how much trouble might he be in?

On August 14th Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, charged Mr Trump with racketeering and 12 other felonies. The allegations painted Mr Trump as the orchestrator of a master plan to overturn the state’s election result. In a notorious leaked phone call from January 2021, the then-president asked Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find 11,780 votes”—the precise number, plus one, that he needed to win the state. Prosecutors argued that the demand constituted solicitation of election fraud, a crime in Georgia.

Ms Willis also charged 18 of Mr Trump’s associates, who are accused of drawing up a hare-brained scheme to manufacture a false slate of electors in order to award Georgia’s 16 electoral-college votes to Mr Trump. The cadre of lawyers claimed that this ruse would allow Mike Pence, Mr Trump’s vice-president, either to overrule Joe Biden’s narrow win in Georgia or let it be adjudicated by a special vote in the House of Representatives (which would have gone in Mr Trump’s favour). Racketeering charges—famously used to lock up mafia dons—carry hefty sentences of five to 20 years. Ms Willis will be hoping that Mr Trump’s co-defendants co-operate rather than risk prison time.

The Georgia indictment is the second alleging that the president violated criminal laws by trying to overturn the 2020 election. On August 1st federal prosecutors charged Mr Trump on four counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official government proceeding (in this case, the certification of the vote) and conspiracy “against rights”—the right to vote and have your vote counted. The indictment described six unnamed co-conspirators. In announcing the charges against the former president, Jack Smith, an independent special counsel who oversaw the investigation, said the probe into co-conspirators “continues”. Both indictments drew from an 18-month investigation by the House of Representatives’ January 6th committee. The bipartisan body lacked the power to charge the former president.

On June 9th federal prosecutors unsealed a 37-count indictment against Mr Trump for mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing investigators. The charges include violations of the Espionage Act of 1917, which makes it a crime to hold secret government documents without authorisation. Mr Trump allegedly retained records about America’s nuclear-weapons programme and other countries’ military capabilities.

Prosecutors said that Mr Trump stored numerous boxes containing the material in a ballroom and a shower at his Florida estate, and shared a “plan of attack” prepared for him by the Pentagon with guests who were unauthorised to see it. After the FBI opened an investigation into Mr Trump’s retention of the documents in March 2022, Mr Trump allegedly hindered their probe by suggesting that his attorney not “play ball”. Later one of Mr Trump’s attorneys falsely certified that he had handed over all the material sought by a grand jury. Walt Nauta, an aide to Mr Trump, was also charged with several crimes.

The investigation is being handled by Jack Smith, a special counsel, and court proceedings will take place in Florida. Merrick Garland, the attorney-general, appointed Mr Smith to avoid the impression of political bias.

In March a grand jury in Manhattan indicted Mr Trump for falsifying business records to hide the payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels (née Stephanie Clifford), a porn actress who says she slept with him in 2006. The case will go to trial in March 2024.

To buy Ms Clifford’s silence, Michael Cohen, then Mr Trump’s lawyer, paid her $130,000 shortly before the 2016 presidential election. The money came from Mr Cohen’s pocket, allegedly at his boss’s direction. Later Mr Trump personally signed cheques to reimburse Mr Cohen. Those payments were falsely marked as legal expenses by the Trump Organisation, his property firm. Mr Cohen says that Mr Trump knew about the misleading records; Mr Trump denies that as well as the affair with Ms Daniels, and says that any suggestion of criminal conduct on his part is a “fairy tale”.

The case is far from straightforward. Falsifying business records is a misdemeanour. To treat the allegedly fraudulent record-keeping as a felony, prosecutors must prove that it facilitated another crime: failing to report what was, in effect, a campaign expense. That is an untested legal strategy.

In 2018 Mr Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations related to the hush money, as well as tax evasion, and served just over a year in prison. Mr Trump was not charged at the time; the Department of Justice (DoJ) has guidelines that recommend against the indictment of a sitting president.

Mr Trump’s lawyers will probably argue that Mr Cohen told his boss that the scheme was legal. Even if convicted the former president is unlikely to go to jail. If charged as a felony, falsifying business records carries a maximum prison sentence of four years, but first-time defendants rarely serve time.

Mr Trump also faces probes over his business dealings. Letitia James, New York’s attorney-general, has sued Mr Trump, three of his children and his business, the Trump Organisation, for committing “staggering” fraud over a decade. Although Ms James is not able to bring criminal charges, she is seeking the return of $250m in allegedly ill-gotten gains and to have Mr Trump permanently barred from running a business in the state. The case goes to trial in October 2023.

Ms James alleges that Mr Trump and his subsidiary businesses grossly inflated his net worth and the value of his properties to mislead prospective lenders. In 11 annual statements between 2011 and 2021, government attorneys found 200 instances in which they claim that the value of assets was fraudulently inflated. In 2015 Mr Trump’s flat was valued as though it were 30,000 square feet (2,787 square metres) when it was in fact around 11,000 square feet. Its purported value was $327m—at a time when only one New York apartment had ever been sold for more than $100m. Mar-a-Lago was valued at $739m on the premise that the land could be developed for flats, though Mr Trump had previously signed away those rights (and sought an income-tax deduction for doing so). An honest evaluation would have valued the property at a little more than one-tenth of the amount claimed, the attorney-general writes.

Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer for the Trump Organisation, pleaded guilty in August to unrelated charges of tax fraud. He testified in a separate criminal trial against the company, which was found guilty of dodging taxes on December 6th. The potential penalties stemming from that conviction, at $1.6m, are pocket change for the firm, but the verdict is nonetheless an embarrassment. Prosecutors said Mr Trump—who was not indicted—had been “explicitly sanctioning tax fraud”.

The former president faces numerous other civil lawsuits. In May a jury in Manhattan found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, an author, who accused him of sexually assaulting her 26 years ago. So far, none of the investigations or lawsuits he faces has significantly damaged his standing on the right. He claims to be the victim of a Democratic witch-hunt.

Some Democrats hope that Mr Trump will be in jail by the time of the presidential election in 2024. That is unlikely. The pace of criminal investigations can be plodding. Finding an unbiased jury to try a former president would be fiendishly hard. It is almost impossible to imagine a charge against Mr Trump speeding through indictment, trial, conviction and all possible appeals in merely two years. And even if one did, that need not be the end of Mr Trump. In 1920 Eugene Debs, a socialist convicted of sedition, ran for president from his prison cell—in Georgia. ■