July 19 (UPI) — Twice-impeached former president Donald Trump is facing whack-a-mole slurry of legal cases. Each time one seems to conclude, another pops up — this time an apparent confirmation from him that he’s the target of a Justice Department investigation related to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a letter (again it was Sunday night!) stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation, and giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an arrest and indictment,” Trump said in a statement on his Truth Social platform.
He went on to blame U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, calling the investigation a politically motivated “witch hunt.”
Here’s a look at Trump’s indictments, the other legal challenges he has faced and where each of them stand.Trump became the first former president to face criminal charges in March when he was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in the first degree for alleged hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI
INDICTMENT 1: PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK VS. TRUMP
Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s probe into 2016 hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels
Trump became the first former president to face criminal charges in March when he was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in the first degree for alleged hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election.
Daniels, born Stephanie Clifford, has long claimed she had an affair with Trump before he became president. Trump’s former attorney-turned-critic Michael Cohen was convicted in 2020 of coordinating a $130,000 payment to Daniels. Trump has denied the affair.
The investigation was started by former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who passed the investigation that led to the indictment on to his successor, Alvin Bragg.Michael D. Cohen reacts in tears when he testifies before the House Oversight Committee in 2019. FIle Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI
“The People of the State of New York allege that Donald J. Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal crimes that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election,” Bragg said in a statement at the time of the indictment.
“Manhattan is home to the country’s most significant business market. We cannot allow New York businesses to manipulate their records to cover up criminal conduct.”
Trump pleaded not guilty in early April before boarding a jet to his Mar-a-Lago resort where he claimed that the justice system had been weaponized against him.
The case began moving along in June as lawyers for Trump go back and forth with prosecutors about evidence, redactions and other court matters. An evidentiary hearing was held on June 27 before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, though the transcript of what occurred remains sealed, court records reviewed by UPI show.
A letter filed with the court June 29 shows that evidence entered into the record include a check Trump issued to Michael Cohen for $35,000 and a 28-page transcript of a news conference that Trump held in New York on Jan. 11, 2017, as published by The New York Times.
New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan set a trial date of March 25, 2024. Trump faces up to four years in prison for each count and a judge could impose consecutive sentences, meaning he could face 136 years in prison if found guilty on every count.
Related to this case, the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, were indicted on tax fraud charges in July 2021. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 charges and agreed to testify against the company in August of last year. The company was found guilty on all counts in December.This photo that was included in a court filing submitted by the Department of Justice on August 30, 2022, shows a collection of documents seized by the FBI on August 8th during execution of a search warrant on the Mar-a-Lago resort home of former President Donald Trump. The documents, some of which were labeled top secret, were taken from the White House when Trump left office. Photo via Department of Justice/UPI
INDICTMENT 2: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA VS. DONALD J. TRUMP AND WALTER NAUTA
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe into classified documents
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland signed an order in November appointing Jack Smith as a special counsel to probe Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Garland also authorized Smith to investigate crimes related to the FBI seizure of thousands of documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in August while investigating the potential mishandling of classified documents taken with him to Florida after his presidency ended.
Trump’s attorneys argued at the time that the documents were part of his personal records exempt from record-keeping laws and part of an ongoing negotiation with the National Archives.
Smith announced in June that an indictment handed up by a grand jury in the Southern District of Florida had been unsealed, charging Trump with “felony violations of our national security laws as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice.”
The indictment reads that the boxes of documents contained information about defense and weapons capabilities of the United States and foreign countries, U.S. nuclear programs and other military-related intelligence. Trump is also accused of showing a classified map related to a military operation to someone who did not have a security clearance and directing his butler, Walter Nauta, to hide the evidence from the FBI.
Court records filed Monday and reviewed by UPI show that prosecutors have handed over their first and second productions of unclassified evidence through the discovery process, including witness interviews conducted on May 12 and June 23 who may testify at the trial of this case.
Trump’s legal team will need clearance to view evidence with classified markings.
Prosecutors have demanded reciprocal discovery from Trump’s team of evidence he has listed in court records. The case is being overseen by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who has ruled in his favor in the past.
Trump’s legal team appeared in court Tuesday for the first hearing ahead of the trial, which both Trump’s team and prosecutors have sought to delay. Trump has Nauta have asked the court to delay the case until after the 2024 presidential election. Smith has called for the case to be postponed until December.
Prosecutors have requested that Cannon order Trump and Nauta not to share any classified material before they are able to look it over during the discovery phase.
Bill Barr, the attorney general under Trump, has defended the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and said the government “acted responsibly” by indicting him while downplaying the hush-money case.
The former top prosecutor said federal officials were “very deferential” to Trump who “jerked them around” and continues to lie about the extent of his authority to declassify documents.A audio recording of former President Donald Trump talking to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is played as the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol holds a public hearing to discuss its findings of a year-long investigation, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on Thursday, October 13, 2022. Pool photo by Alex Wong/UPI
POSSIBLE INDICTMENT 3: GEORGIA 2020 ELECTION MEDDLING
Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis’ probe after infamous call to ‘find’ votes
In January, a special grand jury in Georgia completed its investigation into Trump and his allies for possible interference in the 2020 presidential election in the state stemming from his infamous 2021 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger instructing him to “find” votes.
“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,” Trump said after his election loss.
The special grand jury concluded with a secret report submitted to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who decided to impanel another grand jury to consider indictments earlier this month.
The grand jury fired off subpoenas to Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, on-again-off-again Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and others. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said earlier this month that more subpoenas were possible including a subpoena for Trump.
Trump has repeatedly called for a federal judge to dismiss Willis from the case, who has shot back that Trump’s argument she is politically biased lacks merit and is procedurally flawed.
Court records reviewed by UPI show that the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously dismissed a petition from Trump on Monday seeking to have the case thrown out.
“This is not the sort of relief that this court affords, at least absent extraordinary circumstances that petitioner has not shown are present here,” the justices wrote in the five-page order.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in the case and has a similar motion pending in the Fulton County Superior Court.
According to NBC News, the grand jury considering Trump’s charges could be one of two panels with terms that end Sept. 1. Willis indicated the charges could be levied in the first half of August.
In his Truth Social post Tuesday, Trump called it a “perfect phone call because nothing that was said was wrong.”
“It was clearly a complaint about an election,” he said. “These are all Hoxes and Scams made up to stop me from fighting for the American People.”Pro-Trump rioters breach the security perimeter and penetrate the U.S. Capitol to protest against the Electoral College vote count that would certify President-elect Joe Biden as the winner in Washington, DC on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. Under federal law, Jan. 6 is the date Electoral College votes determining the next president are counted in a joint session of Congress. Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI
POSSIBLE INDICTMENT 4: JAN. 6 RIOTS
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe into the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol
Not much is known about this case beyond what Trump said in his post on Truth Social on Tuesday, as Justice Department and grand jury investigations are secret.
However, it comes after the bipartisan U.S. House select committee voted unanimously to refer Trump to the Justice Department for potential criminal charges.
The committee also released a damning 845-page report that clearly names him as being the central figure that spurred the mob of his supporters to siege the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States.
“In the committee’s hearings, we presented evidence of what ultimately became a multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 Presidential election,” the congressional report reads.
“That evidence has led to an overriding and straightforward conclusion: the central cause of the January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has testified before a federal grand jury in Washington, The New York Times reported. The testimony before the grand jury was reportedly for Smith’s probe. His wife Ivanka Trump has also been subpoenaed.
Former Vice President Mike Pence attempted to fight a subpoena for his testimony but a federal judge ruled March 29 that he must testify in front of the grand jury.
New York A.G. Letitia James began investigating the Trump Organization in March 2019. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI
LETITIA JAMES’ LAWSUIT
A look into the dealings of a real estate tycoon
New York A.G. Letitia James began investigating the Trump Organization in March 2019. As part of the investigation, Trump’s son Eric Trump — the company’s executive vice president — was ordered to sit for a deposition and invoked the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 500 times.
Subpoenas were later issued for Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump Jr.Trump unsuccessfully sought to have the case dismissed multiple times, including a lawsuit against James that was dismissed.
Trump was later found in civil contempt and ordered to pay a daily fine of $10,000 for failing to comply with subpoenas seeking documents related to the case.Former President Donald Trump is seen leaving Trump Tower in New York City in April. Trump was scheduled to sit for a second deposition as part of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million civil fraud lawsuit. File Photo by John Nacion/UPI
James’ investigation is a civil matter examining whether Trump’s business inflated the value of its assets over the years for financial gain and ran alongside the probe led by Vance.
In September, James filed the lawsuit stemming from the investigation against Trump, three of his children and the Trump Organization, alleging an illegal scheme that amassed $250 million by fraudulently overvaluing assets.
James called the number of assets Trump allegedly grossly inflated “staggering.” At the time, James said she was referring the case to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and the Internal Revenue Service for possible criminal violations.
It was not immediately clear if federal prosecutors or the IRS have started probing possible criminal violations related to the allegations made in the civil lawsuit.
Ivanka Trump has since been dismissed from the lawsuit.
James seeks to bar Trump from doing business in the state and $250 million in fines.
E. JEAN CARROLL’S LAWSUITS
Defamation lawsuits centered on sexual abuse allegations
Writer E. Jean Carroll filed the first of her two civil lawsuits against Donald Trump in November 2019, accusing the then-sitting president of defamation when he denied Carroll’s claims that he raped her at New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s.
Carroll had written a memoir of which a segment was published in New York Magazine in June 2019 detailing the alleged assault. Trump responded by not only repeatedly denying that the assault occurred but that he had never met Carroll. Trump said the writer had fabricated the story to sell copies of her forthcoming book while claiming it was a political smear possibly made in collaboration with his Democratic opposition.
“She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section,” Trump said in a June 21 statement.
The first lawsuit has crawled its way through the federal court system and a Jan. 15 start date has been set for the trial.
The second lawsuit was filed with the Supreme Court of the State of New York in November 2022 under New York’s then recently-enacted Adult Survivors Act that allowed victims of sexual assault to file civil suits beyond the statute of limitations.
Court documents reviewed by UPI show Trump is accused of knowing “at a bare minimum” that his statements denying the sexual assault were false and that they have caused Carroll emotional pain and suffering as well as reputational and professional damage.
A Manhattan jury in May unanimously determined that Trump had battered and defamed the columnist, and ordered the now-former president to pay $2 million in compensation and $20,000 in punitive damages for battery. For the defamation allegation, Trump was ordered to pay $1.7 million for reputational repair, $1 million in compensatory damages and $280,000 in punitive damages.
The jury was unable to reach a unanimous agreement on whether Trump had raped Carroll.
The saga over the lawsuits continues after the ruling as both made comments that prompted each to accuse the other of defamation.
After the Manhattan jury issued its ruling, Trump went on CNN and repeated his denials, calling Carroll’s allegations “fake” and the like.
In response, Carroll amended her initial 2019 defamation complaint against the New York City real estate mogul asking for no less than $10 million in damages.
Trump has responded with a countersuit filed against Carroll, accusing her of defamation over post-verdict comments she made in an appearance on CNN.
The court document reviewed by UPI centers on Carroll stating in the interview that Trump had raped her though the jury had only reached consensus that the former president had sexually assaulted her.
Trump’s lawyers in the countersuits state her comments were false and uttered “with actual malice and ill will with intent to significantly and spitefully harm and attack” him.
