Donald Trump’s election victory was historic in a race that would have been his first in the United States.
A victory for Kamala Harris would have made her the first woman president. Instead, Trump will be the first user convicted of a crime to assume the presidency of the United States.
The president-elect was convicted last week of attempting to conceal a cash payment to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign.
He was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records to commit voter fraud in May of last year. He goes on to deny the allegations and call the case a “witch hunt. “
Trump, who will be sworn in as president on Jan. 20, has also been preoccupied with other state and federal criminal cases, as well as some civil cases.
He pleaded not guilty to all charges against him and stated that the accusation was politically motivated.
With his electoral victory, most of the requests were ignored or suspended, but what will Trump have back in the White House?
“Silencing the money” – state case
This is the case of Stormy Daniels, whom Trump found guilty of covering up the $130,000 payment made through her then-lawyer for her silence before the 2016 election, regarding a sexual encounter she claims to have had a decade earlier. .
While he could have faced up to four years in prison, Manhattan Judge Juan M Merchan handed the president-elect a no-penalty sentence, also called an unconditional discharge.
Under New York State law, an absolute release is a sentence imposed “without imprisonment or probationary supervision. ”
The sentence is pronounced when a sentence “considers that it would be dead to impose any condition on the release of the accused,” according to the law.
Read more: Trump escaped prison or a fine, as it happened
This means Trump’s hush money case was resolved without any sanctions that would interfere with his return to the White House, but it still means he will be the first president to be sworn in as a guilty convicted felon.
Appearing in court by videoconference, the president-elect claimed that the process against him was a “political witch hunt” and said: “I have been treated very unfairly and thank you very much. “
Electoral subversion – federal case
Donald Trump was also charged with attempting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
He had pleaded guilty to the offenders’ fees, accusing him of conspiring to obstruct the procedure for collecting and certifying the results.
He was also accused of using “dishonesty, fraud, and deceit” and spreading “pervasive and destabilising lies about election fraud”.
But in July of last year, the Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, granted former presidents broad immunity from prosecution of criminals after the president-elect’s arguments that he simply could not be prosecuted for official moves during his tenure in the White House.
The resolution still ended the special suggestion of Jack Smith’s anti-Trump election subversion case, 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 surfaced on the charges released by the Justice Department, which said the president-elect had engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to counter his 2020 election defeat.
The prosecutor said Mr Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” in the January 6 riots and knowingly spread a false narrative about fraud in the 2020 election.
In response, Mr Trump called Mr Smith “deranged” and criticised the report’s “fake findings”.
Electoral interference: state cases
Trump was officially jailed in the Fulton County, Georgia, jail in August 2023, charged with an alleged plot to overturn his defeat, particularly in that battleground state in the 2020 election.
The election result in Georgia that year was memorably close, triggering two recounts, but ultimately Mr Biden won by 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 anti-racketeering laws, developed to fight organized crime, to brand him and others, his former attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Trump pleaded guilty, along with 8 of his 14 co-defendants, including former New York City mayor and attorney Rudy Giuliani, and appealed the case.
While this case is technically still ongoing, it is largely on hold.
The case faced several upheavals after the president-elect’s lawyers attempted to disqualify the lead prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, alleging alleged misconduct related to her past appointments with attorney Nathan Wade.
Willis was excluded from prosecution through an appeals court in December. She filed an appeal this month.
Under state law, if a district is disqualified, so is its office.
The case is then referred to the executive director of the Georgia Council of Prosecutors, who will have to locate another prosecutor, a procedure that can take years.
The court will also have to determine whether a state prosecutor can 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
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s second case against the president-elect, Mr Trump had also faced charges over classified documents he allegedly took from the White House, including deleting CCTV footage of his staff moving boxes at his Florida home.
However, a ruling dismissed the charges against him on July 15.
Details on the US nuclear weapons programmes, potential vulnerabilities of the nation and its allies, and plans for retaliatory military attacks were in some of the documents, the federal indictment said.
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 cases
Trump also looks attractive in the face of several civil litigations totaling more than $500 million (about £388 million), which will be affected by his victory.
These include a civil fraud case in New York state and lawsuits filed through E Jean Carroll, who sued her for allegedly sexually assaulting her in the 1990s and defaming her when he was her first president.
On December 30, a federal appeals court upheld a Manhattan jury’s $5 million award for defamation and sexual abuse.
A second jury, which awarded Carroll another $83. 3 million in damages for comments Trump made about her when he was president, was asked in the ruling to accept the first jury’s finding that Trump had sexually abused the author. Mr. Trump still looks good with this verdict.
Trump also faces 8 pending civil lawsuits similar to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, following his allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
No trial date has been set, but with appeals it may take months or longer to determine them, reports US broadcaster NBC, Sky’s wife.
Can Trump pardon 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 Mr Trump’s win in November that such a move falls within the power of the president, although a self-pardon has never been tested legally.
The pardon factor does not apply to state cases; the president-elect can only be pardoned because of the cash conviction of New York Governor Kathy Hocul, a Democrat.
Matthews noted in November however that Trump’s conviction and prosecution in other cases – such as Georgia – were weakened by the Supreme Court ruling in favour of immunity.
“Evidence of official acts also cannot be used as evidence for the prosecution of a crime committed outside the exercise of their functions,” 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, based on the Supreme Court’s decision, they will be declared inadmissible. “
If the now-suspended Georgian case were to resume, prosecutors would have difficulty registering a complaint against him.