Donald Trump: What are the investigations the former US president is facing?
Donald Trump has four criminal cases against him in the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election.
In August 2023, the former president surrendered at a court in Georgia, where he is accused of pressuring officials to “find votes” for him in a failed bid to prove he beat Joe Biden in 2020.
It saw him become the first former leader of the US in history to have his mugshot taken.
Other cases against Trump claim he paid “hush” money to a former porn actress in the run-up to the 2016 election, and stole and hid classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort when he left the White House.
Firstly, how is Trump trying to claim immunity?
Trump’s lawyers argued former presidents are entitled to sweeping legal protections and could not be criminally prosecuted for official actions unless first impeached and removed from office.
But in February, a US appeals court ruled he does not have presidential immunity – which could have a significant bearing on the race for the White House.
It means Trump can be prosecuted for actions he took as president from January 2017 and in the run-up to the January 6 riots at the Capitol.
He is expected to appeal the ruling, which would mean the Supreme Court – the country’s highest court – could decide to consider the case or not.
If it doesn’t, then the case against Trump goes ahead – though a trial date has not been set since the original day on 4 March was postponed. Trump has until early next week to appeal.
Sky News US correspondent Mark Stone reports that Trump’s strategy for all his legal cases is to delay.
“He knows that his appearances in courtrooms across the country drive his polling numbers,” said Stone.
“His extensive support base across the country is consistently emboldened by his notion of a ‘witch-hunt’ against him.”
But he added that positive polling among Republican loyalists shifts when applied to the general election and when the prospect of a convicted President Trump is floated.
Last month, the Supreme Court turned down a chance to get involved, by rejecting a request from special counsel Jack Smith to take up the matter quickly and issue a speedy ruling.
If Trump wins the presidency before a trial is concluded, he could presumably use his position to order a new attorney general to dismiss the federal cases or he could seek a pardon for himself.
What about the civil cases?
Donald Trump has fought two civil cases – where another party that isn’t the state brings him to court.
In May 2023 a jury in New York concluded that he sexually assaulted writer E jean Carroll and then defamed her. He was ordered to make one payment to her of $5m (£3.96m) and a second of $83.3m (£66.12m).
In February 2024 he was fined $354.9m (£281.6m) by a judge in New York for inflating his wealth in order to secure easier terms on bank loans. He called the judgment a “manifest injustice”.
January 6 riot (criminal and civil)
On the January 6 case, Trump has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the US government and witness tampering in relation to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result.
The 77-year-old appeared in court in Washington DC on 3 August and pleaded not guilty to the four charges against him.
They are: conspiracy to defraud the US; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct, an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.
A trial date had been set for 4 March, 2024 – a day before so-called Super Tuesday, when many states nominate their Republican or Democratic candidate for president, but that has been postponed.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social: “Deranged Jack Smith & his team of Thugs, who were caught going to the White House just prior to Indicting the 45th President of the United States (an absolute No No!), have been working on this Witch Hunt for almost 3 years, but decided to bring it smack in the middle of Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent’s campaign against him.
“Election Interference! Today a biased, Trump Hating Judge gave me only a two-month extension, just what our corrupt government wanted, SUPER TUESDAY. I will APPEAL!”
Mr Smith, the special counsel behind this criminal case – who has a reputation for winning against war criminals, mobsters and corrupt police officers – alleges the former president’s lies “fuelled” the deadly January 6 insurrection.
He previously said in a statement: “The attack on our nation’s capital on January 6 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.”
Prosecutors also claim he “exploited” the disorder by refusing his advisers’ suggestion to send a message directing the rioters to leave the building, after a rally and fiery speech by him earlier that day.
These charges do not yet affect Trump from a practical standpoint as nothing prevents criminal defendants from campaigning or taking office if they are convicted.
However, how it will affect the US public’s decision whether or not to vote for him is less clear.
Georgia electoral fraud (criminal charges)
Trump was formally booked on 13 charges at Georgia’s Fulton County jail on 25 August.
While he was there, he had his mugshot and fingerprints taken before being released on bail.
X This content is provided by X, which may be using cookies and other technologies. To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies. You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable X cookies or to allow those cookies just once. You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options. Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to X cookies. To view this content you can use the button below to allow X cookies for this session only. Enable Cookies Allow Cookies Once
It comes off the back of a 100-page indictment against him and 18 of his associates, accusing them of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in Georgia.
It charges the former president with 13 offenses, including forgery, racketeering, and breaching a Georgia state law against soliciting a public official to violate their oath.
Among those indicted alongside Trump in Georgia are his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark, a Trump administration Justice Department official, and various other lawyers including John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro.
Fani Willis, the Democrat district attorney for Fulton County, has been investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election result since early 2021.
She is using state RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organisations) laws originally passed in 1970 to target organised crime groups, namely the Mafia.
On 15 February, a Georgia judge will hold a hearing to consider Trump’s effort to remove prosecutor Ms Willis from the case.
Trump and two of his co-defendants argue she has benefitted financially from a romantic relationship with one of the lawyers she hired to work on the case.
Ms Willis has admitted to the relationship but denies that it has tainted the prosecution.
She has proposed 5 August as a date to start the trial and has said it could last into 2025.
The election result in Georgia was memorably close, triggering two recounts, but ultimately Joe Biden won by 11,779 votes – or 0.23% of the five million cast.
It was certified by both Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp and secretary of state Brad Raffensperger. But instead of accepting it, Trump set about a campaign to prove he was the rightful winner.
On 2 January 2021, he was recorded telling Mr Raffensperger in a phone call: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
He is then alleged to have recruited a group of Republican activists in Georgia to serve as fake electors to stop the vote being certified by the Electoral College in Washington DC on 6 January.
Trump also stands accused of urging Georgia Republicans to convene a special session of the state legislature so his allies, including Mr Giuliani, could present false claims the vote was corrupt.
One of the allegations on the indictment details a plot involving one of Trump’s lawyers to tamper with voting machines in a rural Georgia county and steal data from a voting machine company.
Classified documents (criminal)
Trump also faces charges over classified documents he allegedly took from the White House, including deleting CCTV footage of his staff moving boxes at his Florida home.
An indictment revealed on 27 July, which supersedes the one filed earlier this year, charges the former US president with 42 offences.
They accuse him of risking some of the country’s most sensitive security secrets, by taking them from the Capitol to his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Details on the US nuclear weapons programmes, potential vulnerabilities of the US and its allies, and plans for retaliatory military attacks were in some of the documents, the federal indictment says.
Two new charges of “altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing an object or record” accuse Trump of instructing his valet Walt Nauta and property manager Carols de Oliveria to delete surveillance footage after FBI and Justice Department officials visited Mar-a-Lago in June 2022.
The CCTV captures Mr Nauta moving boxes in and out of a storage room on several occasions, including a day before an FBI raid.
According to the indictment, Mr De Oliveira told another employee “the boss” wanted a server containing security footage to be deleted.
When the staff member said they did not know how and believed they did not have the right to, Mr De Oliveira is said to have asked: “What are we going to do?”
An additional charge also accuses the former leader of showing off documents to visitors at his golf club in New Jersey during an interview for his memoir with his former chief of staff Mark Meadows in July 2021.
The legal move follows a months-long investigation by special counsel Mr Smith. A trial date has been set for 20 May 2024, but this is expected to be delayed.
Trump has insisted he was entitled to keep the classified documents when he left the White House and has claimed without evidence that he had declassified them.
His spokesperson dismissed the new charges as “nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt” by Joe Biden’s administration “to harass President Trump and those around him” and to influence the 2024 presidential race.
Stormy Daniels (criminal)
Trump made history back in April last year when he became the first former US president to face criminal charges.
He personally pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts as he appeared in a New York court on allegations relating to him allegedly falsifying business records in the run-up to the 2016 election.
The Manhattan criminal case centres around alleged “hush” money sent to former porn actress Stormy Daniels after she said they had an affair.
Ms Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claims she had an affair with Trump in 2006, which the former US president denies.
In 2016, when he was running for president, she offered to sell her story to the press.
Trump’s then lawyer Michael Cohen was notified of her plans, resulting in a $130,000 (£105,000) payment allegedly being made to keep Ms Daniels quiet.
Once he was elected, Trump reportedly reimbursed Mr Cohen by paying him more than double the original amount. He continued to deny the affair, however.
New York investigators have been looking into the former president’s finances for years – originally led by former District Attorney Cyrus R Vance Jr.
But when he was replaced with Alvin Bragg in 2022, Mr Bragg decided to drop the grand jury investigation into claims the Trump empire fraudulently inflated its real estate value.
Instead, he decided to focus on the silence money case last summer, impanelling a grand jury (one assembled in secret to determine whether there’s enough evidence to prosecute) in January.
Soon after, Mr Cohen, who was jailed on several counts in 2018, was summoned by prosecutors.
According to court documents, Trump falsely listed his former lawyer’s reimbursement as “legal services”.
Trump has described the investigation as a politically motivated “witch hunt”.
A trial date has been set for 25 March.