donald trump has been re-elected to the White House like a convicted felon who is awaiting sentencing in his silent money case in New York and still working to avoid prosecution in others state and federal cases.

It’s an extraordinarily unique position for him: Never before has a criminal defendant been elected to the nation’s highest office, just as a former president had never been criminally charged until last year.

Trump has said several times that he plans to fire special counsel jack smith and end federal cases against him for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election and mishandling classified documents.

“It was clearly worth pushing aggressively to delay these cases as long as possible,” said Jessica Levinson, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School.

Meanwhile, a New York judge will sentence the former president later this month after delaying imposition of punishment before Election Day to avoid any appearance of affecting the outcome of the presidential race, although Trump’s lawyers are expected to Ask the judge to postpone sentencing now that he is president-elect.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Here’s what you should know about the four criminal cases:

New York ruling

Trump is scheduled to appear in a New York court on November 26 to be sentenced for his convicted earlier this year on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush payment made during the 2016 campaign to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who alleged a previous affair with the president-elect. (Trump denies the matter.)

Whether that ruling comes to fruition or not remains an open question.

Judge Juan Merchan A deadline of November 12 has been set to decide whether to overturn the conviction due to the Supreme Court’s decision. decision this summer grant a president some presidential immunity. If Merchan does that, the charges would be dismissed and Trump would not be sentenced.

But if the judge decides to keep the conviction intact, the former president’s lawyers are expected to ask Merchan to delay Trump’s sentence so they can appeal. And if that is not granted, his lawyers plan to appeal the immunity decision to state appeals courts and potentially all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to ask the courts to delay Trump’s sentencing until all appeals are exhausted, which That could take months.

If Merchan goes ahead with the sentence, Trump could be ordered to serve up to four years in prison, but the judge is not required to sentence the president-elect to prison, and could impose a lesser sentence, such as probation, residential confinement, community service or fine.

Any sentencing, of course, will be complicated by the fact that Trump will take office on January 20, 2025. Trump’s lawyers will likely shape their appeals to raise constitutional questions questioning whether a state judge can sentence an elected president, which could paralyze the case in court for years.

Since this is a state case, Trump does not have the power to pardon himself next year after taking office.

Federal cases in DC and Florida

Trump’s election victory is poised to have the biggest impact on the two federal criminal cases filed against him by Smith in Washington, D.C., and Florida.

Since the cases were filed in 2023, Trump’s main legal strategy has been to delay the trials until after the election so that, if elected, he could fire Smith, leading to the end of the two cases. At the end of October, said the former president I would take that step without hesitation.

“Oh, it’s so easy. It’s very easy,” Trump said when conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked him if he would “forgive himself” or “fire Jack Smith” if he were re-elected.

“I would fire him in two seconds,” Trump said.

Removing Smith would allow the Justice Department and Trump’s attorney general to take steps to drop the charges against him and end the court cases.

But until Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, Smith has time to weigh his options on issues the department has never had to confront before.

One of the first hurdles is whether the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel believes that an elected president is covered by the same legal protection from prosecution as a sitting president. That guidance would determine the next course of action, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

More than half a dozen people close to the special counsel’s office or other senior Justice Department officials told CNN they believe Smith does not want to close the business before Trump orders him to do so or ousts him.

According to federal law, Smith must provide a confidential report on his office’s work to the attorney general before leaving office.

In the D.C. case, Smith accused Trump for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. The case was stalled for months as Trump pressured federal courts to grant him presidential immunity, and in July the Supreme Court issued a ruling historical fact that said there was a certain immunity from criminal proceedings.

The federal judge overseeing the trial has been deciding how much of Trump’s conduct at the center of the case is protected by immunity after prosecutors last month laid out their arguments for why the ruling should have no impact on the case. .

The charges filed by Smith against the president-elect in Florida accuse Trump of illegally taking classified documents from the White House and resisting government attempts to recover the materials. That case was expelled in July by Judge Aileen Cannon, but prosecutors have appealed his ruling, which said Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Smith violated the Constitution.

Georgia RICO Case

The immediate fate of Trump’s criminal case in Georgia depends largely on whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, is disqualified from prosecuting the matter after her previous romantic relationship with a fellow prosecutor. But even if he were allowed to continue prosecuting Trump, the case would almost certainly be in jeopardy now that he has been elected.

He criminal charges again Trump for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election are effectively on hold while the appeals court decides whether to disqualify Willis, a decision not expected until 2025.

If Willis is removed, sources told CNN they believe it is unlikely another prosecutor will want to take over the case and he will effectively disappear.

Sources familiar with the case said it is unlikely that a state-level judge would allow the proceedings to continue when Trump is president, and in that scenario, Trump’s lawyers would certainly move to dismiss the case.

There is no clear answer as to whether a state prosecutor, like Willis, can prosecute a sitting president. Trump’s victory now forces Willis to confront that constitutional question on top of the existing legal questions that have already created uncertainty about the future of the Georgia case.

civil lawsuits

The former president is also defending himself in a litany of civil lawsuits, including some about his role In the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol, two E. Jean Carroll defamation casesand a civil fraud case filed by the New York attorney general where Trump was ordered to pay almost $454 million in damages.

In September, state and federal appeals courts in New York heard arguments in two of Trump’s civil appeals.

Trump lost two defamation cases to Carroll in 2023 and 2024 in federal court after a jury found him responsible for sexually abusing the former columnist and subsequently defaming her. Two juries awarded Carroll $5 million and $83 million.

A federal appeals court heard Trump’s call to throw out Carroll’s first verdict in September. The court has not yet issued a decision.

Later that same month, a state appeals court heard arguments in Trump’s efforts to throw out the $454 million civil fraud judgment against him, in which a judge found that he, his adult children and his company inflated fraudulently inflating the value of Trump’s assets to get better loans and insurance rates.

The five-judge appeals court appeared set to at least reduce the fine imposed on Trump, although it has not yet issued a decision. That ruling can be appealed to New York’s highest appeals court.

Trump also faces civil lawsuits brought by Democratic lawmakers and others over his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

All of these cases may continue to occur even as Trump serves his second term in the White House. In a 1997 Supreme Court ruling stemming from a civil lawsuit involving then-President Bill Clinton, the justices unanimously decided that sitting presidents could not invoke presidential immunity to avoid civil litigation while in office. .

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