Donald Trump’s electoral victory was historic in a race that would have been the first in the United States.
A victory for Kamala Harris would have made her the first female president. Instead, Trump will be the first user convicted of a crime to assume the presidency of the United States.
The president-elect was criminally convicted last week for attempting to conceal a cash payment to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign.
He was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in May of last year. He continues to deny the allegations and call the matter a “witch hunt. “
Mr Trump, who will be inaugurated as president on 20 January, was also embroiled in other state and federal criminal cases, as well as some civil cases.
He pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him and alleged the prosecutions were politically motivated.
With his election win, most cases were either dismissed or put on hold, but what will happen to Mr Trump’s legal battles once he returns to the White House?
“Silence of money” – the case of the state
This is the case relating to Stormy Daniels, for which Trump was found guilty of covering up his then-lawyer’s $130,000 (£99,000) payment for her silence before the 2016 election, about a sexual encounter she alleges they had a decade earlier.
While he may have faced up to 4 years in prison, Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchán gave the president-elect a non-penalty sentence, also known as absolute freedom.
Under New York State law, an absolute release is a sentence imposed “without imprisonment or probationary supervision. “
The sentence is pronounced when a ruling “considers that it would be unnecessary to impose any conditions on the defendant’s release,” according to the law.
Read more: Trump escaped from prison or a fine, as it happened
This means that Trump’s case over the hush money was settled without any sanctions that could interfere with his return to the White House, but it still means that he will be the first president to be sworn in as a convicted felon.
Appearing in court via video link, the president-elect again claimed the case against him was a “political witch-hunt,” and said: “I was treated very unfairly and I thank you very much.”
Electoral Subversion – Federal Case
Donald Trump has also been accused of reversing his defeat in the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
He had pleaded guilty to the criminals’ fees, accusing him of conspiracy to obstruct the procedure for collecting and certifying results.
He was also charged with “dishonesty, fraud and deception” and spreading “widespread and destabilizing lies about voter fraud. “
But in July last year, the Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, granted former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution after arguments from the president-elect that he could not be prosecuted for official actions taken during his time in the White House.
The resolution still ended the special suggestion of Jack Smith’s election subversion case against Trump, and after the Republican’s election victory in November, prosecutors filed a motion to drop the charges.
In January, despite Trump’s attempt to block it, a report by Smith on the charges released by the Justice Department surfaced, saying the president-elect had engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to offset his 2020 election loss.
The prosecutor said Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” in the Jan. 6 riot and knowingly spread a false narrative about fraud in the 2020 election.
In response, Mr. Trump and Mr. Smith “upset” and criticized the report’s “false conclusions. ”
Electoral interference: state cases
Trump was officially jailed in the Fulton County Jail in Georgia in August 2023, accused of an alleged plot to oppose his defeat, particularly in the battleground state in the 2020 election.
The outcome of that year’s Georgia election was memorably close, prompting two recounts, but in the end Biden won with 11,779 votes, or 0. 23% of the five million cast.
He qualified through Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger. But Trump was not satisfied with the result.
Prosecutors used state racketeering laws, developed to fight organised crime, to charge him and others, including his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Mr Trump pleaded not guilty – along with eight of his 14 co-defendants, including former New York mayor and lawyer Rudy Giuliani – and has appealed against the case.
Although technically this case is still ongoing, it is largely on hold.
The case faced several upheavals after the president-elect’s lawyers attempted to disqualify the chief prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, alleging alleged misconduct related to her previous relationship with attorney Nathan Wade.
Willis was barred from prosecution through an appeals court in December. She filed an appeal this month.
Under state law, if a district attorney is disqualified, yours is disqualified, too.
The case is then referred to the executive director of the Georgia Prosecutors Council, who will have to locate another prosecutor, a procedure that can take years.
The court will also have to determine whether a state prosecutor will be able to prosecute a sitting president once proceedings resume.
As of writing, Judge Scott McAffe has also dismissed five of the 13 charges against the president-elect.
Misuse of classified documents – federal case
In special counsel Jack Smith’s second case against the president-elect, Trump also faced fees related to classified documents he allegedly took from the White House, adding the deletion of CCTV footage of his moving boxes at his Florida home.
However, a judge threw out this case against him on 15 July.
According to the federal indictment, some documents included details about U. S. nuclear weapons programs, the vulnerabilities of the country and its allies and plans for retaliatory military strikes.
Prosecutors had appealed the decision, but an appeals court agreed to uphold the dismissal in November.
Smith then resigned from the Justice Department in January after filing his report in the election interference case.
Civil Affairs
Trump also looks attractive as several civil lawsuits totaling more than $500 million (around £388 million) will be affected by his victory.
These come with a civil fraud case in New York state and lawsuits filed through E Jean Carroll, who sued him for allegedly sexually assaulting her in the 1990s and defaming her when he was president for the first time.
On December 30, a federal appeals court upheld the Manhattan jury’s $5 million award for defamation and sexual abuse.
A second jury – that awarded Ms Carroll an additional $83.3m in damages for comments Trump had made about her while he was president – had been instructed by the judge to accept the first jury’s finding that Trump had sexually abused the writer. Mr Trump is still appealing that verdict
Mr Trump is also facing eight pending civil suits related to the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, following his complaints of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
No trial date has been set, but with appeals these could take months or even longer to be determined, Sky’s US partner network NBC reports.
Can Trump forgive himself?
As both federal cases have been dismissed, there is no need for the president-elect to pardon himself.
Sky News US correspondent James Matthews said after Trump’s victory in November that such a move is within the president’s power, although self-pardon has never been legally proven.
The issue of a pardon doesn’t apply in state cases, meaning the president-elect can only be pardoned over the hush money conviction by New York Governor Kathy Hocul – a Democrat.
Matthews noted, however, in November that Trump’s conviction and prosecution in cases, such as the Georgia case, had been weakened by the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of immunity.
“Evidence of official acts also cannot be used as evidence for the prosecution of a crime committed outside the line of duty,” the correspondent said.
He went on to say that he would “expect Trump’s lawyers to point to the evidence used to convict him (the phone calls and habit while he was president) and say that they relate to official acts and that, depending on the Supreme Court’s decision, they will be declared inadmissible. ” “
If the now-suspended Georgian case were to be resumed, prosecutors would have difficulty registering a complaint against him.