Donald Trump has managed to reclaim the presidency, and with it, he’s brought along a hefty suitcase filled with legal baggage. While the entire world is holding their breath to see the implications of his return to the White House, Trump is waiting to see what happens as the first U.S. president to be a criminal defendant when elected to office.
It’s safe to say it’s unchartered territory, so what does his presidency mean for the multiple legal cases against him?
Let’s break down the legal circus Trump is starring in:
What will happen to Trump’s ‘hush money’ case?
First up, we’ve got the hush money case in New York. Trump’s due to be sentenced on November 26 for 34 counts of falsifying business records. It’s all about covering up payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign. Trump denies the affair, but the court didn’t buy it.
Judge Juan Merchan deferred the date twice so that sentencing would fall after the election and he has given himself until November 12 to decide whether to bin the whole thing because of presidential immunity. If not, the potential sentence can be anything from a slap on the wrist, house arrest, probation to four years behind bars.
Dr John Hart, who is a US politics specialist from ANU, told PEDESTRIAN.TV that it’s unlikely Trump will be sentenced jail time.
“Most people don’t expect a jail sentence — it would be difficult politically. There would be a real risk of violence if Trump was locked up. There’s also practical concerns, because he’s a president to be he’s got Secret Service protection, and if he was sent to jail he’d have to have Secret Service protection in jail.”
Since it’s a state case, Trump does not have the power to pardon himself when he becomes president.
How will Trump’s federal cases be affected by his presidency?
Now, onto the federal cases. One case accuses Trump of illegally retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them. In a surprising turn of events, Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed this case in July 2024. However, Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s team has appealed this decision.
The Federal Election Interference Case is the other investigation under Smith’s watch. This case alleges that Trump conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It’s currently on hold as appeals courts consider Trump’s claims of presidential immunity. In October 2024, Smith filed a 165-page document arguing that Trump was acting as a private citizen, not the president, when he allegedly tried to overturn the election. Trump has been vocal about his plans to end these investigations if he returns to the White House. He’s stated that he would fire Smith “within two seconds” of taking office.
Whether or not these appeals go through before Trump is sworn in to his presidency is where things get tricky.
“If [the cases] are not wound up before Trump becomes president, in other words withdrawn by the Special Counsel in one way or another, Trump will simply get his attorney general to dismiss those charges once in power, and that will be the end of any accountability of the former president,” said Hart.
New York Times reported this morning that Special Counsel Smith is looking at how he can wind down the federal charges against Trump.
Trump’s election interference case
This case charges Trump for his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss specifically in Georgia. According to Hart, the tricky thing about this case is that although Trump has no jurisdiction to pardon himself from a state case, the Department of Justice has a policy that is based on a reading of the Constitution that basically says presidents should not need to go to trial or be indicted during their term in the presidency. Which begs the question: does the Federal Department of Justice ruling prevail?
“I think the risk there is that if they try and put Trump on trial and try to hold him accountable for interfering with the election results in 2020, they run a serious risk of rioting from Trump supporters. We’ve already had an indication of what they could do, so there might be political pressure to drop that one way or another. I think it’s probably very unlikely that that case will be heard during Trump’s presidency,” he explained.
Where do we go from here?
So, what happens now? Well, it’s anyone’s guess really. Trump has made it clear he wants to use the presidency as a giant ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. Hart said that “the likelihood of any sort of accountability being enforced now is pretty low”, but New York Governor Kathy Hochul is not having a bar of it.
“We will get through the uncertainty of a new administration in Washington because, as I said, we’ve done this before,” Hochul said at a press conference after the election results.
“That does not mean we’ll accept an agenda from Washington that strips away the rights that New Yorkers have long enjoyed.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James reiterated her sentiment: “We are prepared to fight back once again because, as the attorney general of this great state, it is my job to protect and defend the rights of New Yorkers and the rule of law.”
Ultimately, we’ll just have to wait and see how the first president to be given criminal charges will fair in his second term. Still wondering how that’s even a real sentence I can write.
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