On 10/5/2024 9:32 AM, alf beer wrote:
> The Cases Against Trump: A Guide
>
> Thirty-four felony convictions. Charges of fraud, election subversion, and
> obstruction. One place to keep track of the presidential candidate’s legal
> troubles.
> By David A. Graham
> Arrows pointing at Donald Trump
> Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Brendan McDermid / Getty.
> September 13, 2024

The *only* reason Trump is running is to try to stay out of prison. He *knows*
the cases against him are extremely wrong and convictions are all but
guaranteed. Trump has *admitted* it.

https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1842374094941004072

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> Donald Trump’s luck in the courts has turned.
>
> Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony when a
> jury in Manhattan found him guilty of 34 counts in May. That followed
> decisive and costly losses in civil cases: Trump was fined more than half a
> billion dollars when courts found that he had defamed the writer E. Jean
> Carroll and committed financial fraud in his business.
>
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> Since then, Trump has won a string of victories, and the three remaining
> criminal cases against him seem deeply bogged down. A Supreme Court
> decision on July 1 threw into limbo the federal case against him for
> attempting to subvert the 2020 election. The justices ruled that a
> president is immune from prosecution for any “official” actions, and found
> that some of the allegations concerned official actions. Special Counsel
> Jack Smith has now refiled charges.
>
> Two weeks later, Trump won another long-shot victory when Judge Aileen
> Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed charges against him for hoarding
> classified documents in his residence at Mar-a-Lago. She concluded that
> Smith’s appointment was not constitutional. The decision has been appealed.
>
> Meanwhile, three criminal charges against Trump related to election
> subversion in Fulton County, Georgia, have been tossed by a judge, and the
> rest are indefinitely delayed amid litigation over whether Fani Willis, the
> prosecutor in that case, should be removed
>
> All of this means that Trump heads toward the election as a convicted felon
> and with three serious cases hanging over his head, but it also means that
> he will not go on trial again before the election. That spares him time in
> court and deprives voters of a chance to know whether he committed many
> grave crimes. If Trump wins, many anticipate that he will direct the
> Justice Department to dismiss the federal charges against him.
>
> Here’s a summary of the major legal cases against Trump, including key
> dates, assessments of the gravity of the charges, and expectations about
> how they could turn out. This guide will be updated regularly as the cases
> proceed.
>
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> New York State: Fraud
>
> In the fall of 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil
> suit against Trump, his adult sons, and his former aide Allen Weisselberg,
> alleging a years-long scheme in which Trump fraudulently reported the value
> of properties in order to either lower his tax bill or improve the terms of
> his loans, all with an eye toward inflating his net worth.
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> When?
> Justice Arthur Engoron ruled on February 16 that Trump must pay $355
> million plus interest, the calculated size of his ill-gotten gains from
> fraud. The judge had previously ruled against Trump and his co-defendants
> in late September 2023, concluding that many of the defendants’ claims were
> “clearly” fraudulent—so clearly that he didn’t need a trial to hear them.
>
> How grave was the allegation?
> Fraud is fraud, and in this case, the sum of the fraud stretched into the
> hundreds of millions—but compared with some of the other legal matters in
> which Trump is embroiled, this is a little pedestrian. The case was also
> civil rather than criminal. But although the stakes are lower for the
> nation, they remain high for Trump: The size of the penalty appears to be
> larger than Trump can easily pay, and he also faces a three-year ban on
> operating his company.
>
> What happens now?
> Trump has appealed the case. On March 25, the day he was supposed to post
> bond, an appeals court reduced the amount he must post from more than $464
> million to $175 million. A hearing on his appeal been scheduled for
> September 26.
> Manhattan: Defamation and Sexual Assault
>
> Although these other cases are all brought by government entities, Trump
> also faced a pair of defamation suits from the writer E. Jean Carroll, who
> said that Trump sexually assaulted her in a department-store dressing room
> in the 1990s. When he denied it, she sued him for defamation and later
> added a battery claim.
>
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> When?
> In May 2023, a jury concluded that Trump had sexually assaulted and defamed
> Carroll, and awarded her $5 million. A second defamation case produced an
> $83.3 million judgment in January 2024.
>
> How grave was the allegation?
> Although these cases didn’t directly connect to the same fundamental issues
> of rule of law and democratic governance that some of the criminal cases
> do, they were a serious matter, and a federal judge’s blunt statement that
> Trump raped Carroll has gone underappreciated.
>
> What happens now?
> Trump has appealed both cases, and he posted bond for the $83.3 million in
> March. During the second trial, he also continued to insult Carroll, which
> may have courted additional defamation suits.
> Manhattan: Hush Money
>
> In March 2023, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg became the first
> prosecutor to bring felony charges against Trump, alleging that the former
> president falsified business records as part of a scheme to pay hush money
> to women who said they’d had sexual relationships with Trump.
>
> When?
> The trial began on April 15 and ended with a May 30 conviction. A judge is
> scheduled to rule September 16 on whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision
> on presidential immunity invalidates the case. On September 6, he announced
> that he was postponing sentencing to avoid interfering with the election.
>
> How grave was the allegation?
> Many people have analogized this case to Al Capone’s conviction on tax
> evasion: It’s not that he didn’t deserve it, but it wasn’t really why he
> was an infamous villain. Trump did deserve it, and he’s now a convicted
> felon. Moreover, although the charges were about falsifying records, those
> records were falsified to keep information from the public as it voted in
> the 2016 election. It was among the first of Trump’s many attacks on fair
> elections. (His two impeachments were also for efforts to undermine the
> electoral process.) If at times this case felt more minor compared with the
> election-subversion or classified-documents cases, it’s because those other
> cases have set a grossly high standard for what constitutes gravity.
>
> What happens now?
> The next major step is sentencing on November 26.
> Department of Justice: Mar-a-Lago Documents
>
> Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with 37 felonies in connection
> with his removal of documents from the White House when he left office, but
> Judge Aileen Cannon has dismissed the case, finding that Smith’s
> appointment was not constitutional. Smith has appealed. The charges
> included willful retention of national-security information, obstruction of
> justice, withholding of documents, and false statements. Trump took boxes
> of documents to properties, where they were stored haphazardly, but the
> indictment centered on his refusal to give them back to the government
> despite repeated requests.
>
> David A. Graham: This indictment is different
>
> When?
> Smith filed charges in June 2023. On July 15, 2024, Cannon dismissed the
> charges. Smith appealed that dismissal on August 26. He faces a de facto
> deadline of January 20, 2025, at which point Trump, if reelected, would
> likely shut down a case.
>
> How grave is the allegation?
> These are, I have written, the stupidest crimes imaginable, but they are
> nevertheless very serious. Protecting the nation’s secrets is one of the
> greatest responsibilities of any public official with classified clearance,
> and not only did Trump put these documents at risk, but he also (allegedly)
> refused to comply with a subpoena, tried to hide the documents, and lied to
> the government through his attorneys.
>
> How plausible is a guilty verdict?
> That will depend on both the appeals court and the election. This once
> looked to be the most open-and-shut case: The facts and legal theory here
> are pretty straightforward. But Smith drew a short straw when he was
> randomly assigned Cannon, a Trump appointee who repeatedly ruled favorably
> for Trump and bogged the case down in endless pretrial arguments. Even
> before her dismissal of the case, some legal commentators accused her of
> “sabotaging” it.
> Fulton County: Election Subversion
>
> In Fulton County, Georgia, which includes most of Atlanta, District
> Attorney Fani Willis brought a huge racketeering case against Trump and 18
> others, alleging a conspiracy that spread across weeks and states with the
> aim of stealing the 2020 election.
>
> When?
> Willis obtained the indictment in August 2023. The number of people charged
> makes the case unwieldy and difficult to track. Several of them, including
> Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, struck plea deals in the
> fall. Because a challenge to Willis’s presence on the case isn’t going to
> be heard until December, the case will not begin before the election.
>
> How grave is the allegation?
> More than any other case, this one attempts to reckon with the full breadth
> of the assault on democracy following the 2020 election.
>
> How plausible is a guilty verdict?
> Expert views differ. This is a huge case for a local prosecutor, even in a
> county as large as Fulton, to bring. The racketeering law allows Willis to
> sweep in a great deal of material, and she has some strong evidence—such as
> a call in which Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger
> to “find” some 11,000 votes. Three major plea deals from co-defendants may
> also ease Willis’s path, but getting a jury to convict Trump will still be
> a challenge. A judge on September 12 tossed three counts as outside state
> jurisdiction, and dismissed several other but said the state can refile
> them with more detail. The case has also been hurt by the revelation of a
> romantic relationship between Willis and an attorney she hired as a special
> prosecutor. On March 15, Judge Scott McAfee declined to throw out the
> indictment, but he sharply castigated Willis.
> Department of Justice: Election Subversion
>
> Special Counsel Smith has also charged Trump with four federal felonies in
> connection with his attempt to remain in power after losing the 2020
> election. This case is in court in Washington, D.C.
>
> When?
> A grand jury indicted Trump on August 1, 2023. The trial was originally
> scheduled for March but was frozen while the Supreme Court mulled whether
> the former president should be immune to prosecution. On July 1, 2024, the
> justices ruled that a president is immune from prosecution for official but
> not unofficial acts, finding that some of Trump’s postelection actions were
> official and sending the case back to the trial court to determine others.
> Smith obtained a new indictment on August 27, which retains the same four
> felony charges but omits references to corrupting the Justice Department.
> As with the other DOJ case, time is of the essence for Smith, because
> Trump, if reelected, could shut down a case upon taking office in January
> 2025.
>
> David A. Graham: Trump attempted a brazen, dead-serious attack on American
> democracy
>
> How grave is the allegation?
> This case rivals the Fulton County one in importance. It is narrower,
> focusing just on Trump and a few key elements of the paperwork coup, but
> the symbolic weight of the U.S. Justice Department prosecuting an attempt
> to subvert the American election system is heavy.
>
> How plausible is a guilty verdict?
> It’s very hard to say. Smith avoided some of the more unconventional
> potential charges, including aiding insurrection, and everyone watched much
> of the alleged crime unfold in public in real time, but no precedent exists
> for a case like this, with a defendant like this.
> Additionally …
>
> In more than 30 states, cases were filed over whether Trump should be
> thrown off the 2024 ballot under a novel legal theory about the Fourteenth
> Amendment. Proponents, including J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe in
> The Atlantic, argued that the former president is ineligible to serve again
> under a clause that disqualifies anyone who took an oath defending the
> Constitution and then subsequently participated in a rebellion or an
> insurrection. They said that Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election and
> his incitement of the January 6 riot meet the criteria.
>
> When?
> Authorities in several states ruled that Trump should be removed from the
> ballot, and the former president appealed to the Supreme Court. The
> justices ruled unanimously on March 4 that states could not remove Trump
> from the ballot. The conservative majority (over strenuous liberal
> objections) also closed the door on a postelection disqualification by
> Congress without specific legislation.
>
> How grave is the allegation?
> In a sense, the claim made here was even graver than the criminal election-
> subversion cases filed against Trump by the U.S. Department of Justice and
> in Fulton County, Georgia, because neither of those cases alleges
> insurrection or rebellion. But the stakes were also much different—rather
> than criminal conviction, they concern the ability to serve as president.
>
> What happens next?
> The question of disqualification seems to now be closed, with Trump set to
> appear on the ballot in every state.