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- Winning the 2024 election is helping Donald Trump in all four of his criminal cases.
- Special prosecutor Jack Smith has sought stays in both federal cases against him.
- Being president-elect may also help him delay his state cases in Georgia and New York.
Donald Trump’s presidential victory is also a win as he seeks to resolve his four criminal indictments.
In the week since Election Day, special prosecutor Jack Smith has sought deadline stays in both of the federal cases against Trump, each time citing the “unprecedented circumstance” of Trump’s pending inauguration.
On Wednesday, he asked to stay all deadlines in an appeal he hoped would revive the classified documents case in Florida. On Friday, Smith was granted his request to similarly wipe the calendar dates for Trump’s election interference case.
In both cases, Smith has asked that the cases remain inactive at least until December 2 “to determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policies,” which bar the prosecution of sitting presidents.
Meanwhile, Trump is challenging both his state-level indictments. One is in Georgia, where he also faces election interference allegations, and the other is in Manhattan, where his sentencing on 34 felony records-falsification counts was also put on ice at the request of prosecutors.
Can any of these indictments survive the unprecedented one-two punch of Trump’s reelection and the US Supreme Court’s July presidential immunity decision, which lawyers have cited as grounds for dismissal in all four cases?
Here’s where Trump’s quartet of criminal cases stand and what legal experts say could come next.
The New York hush-money case
On Election Day, Trump, the first US president convicted of a crime, had a November 26 Manhattan sentencing date on his calendar.
That sentencing is now on hold, as is the judge’s pending decision on whether the case should be voided on presidential immunity grounds.
On Tuesday, all parties agreed to do nothing further with the case until November 19, when prosecutors for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg say they will reveal how they wish to proceed.
Trump faces a sentencing range of as little as no jail and as much as four years in prison for his May conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up his $130,000 hush-money payment to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels.
If the trial judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, does not toss the case, Trump has promised to fight his indictment and conviction in New York’s appellate courts.
His lawyers argue that grand jurors and trial jurors heard evidence that is now barred under July’s landmark US Supreme Court presidential immunity decision. The decision bars prosecutors from using any evidence involving a president acting in his official capacity.
If he’s sentenced, legal experts say further appeals could keep a jail sentence on hold for years — though a jail sentence is highly unlikely, a quartet of former New York judges previously told BI.
Prior to the election results, Michael Dorf, a Cornell Law School professor, predicted that if Trump won, he would quickly file court papers to delay the sentencing until he is no longer president.
Trump’s federal cases
On December 2, when he makes his plans clear, Smith may well decide to close shop on both Trump cases in anticipation of Inauguration Day.
After all, Trump would be eligible for a presidential pardon, though a self-pardon has never before been sought. And Trump said during a conservative radio interview last month that if elected, he would fire Smith “within two seconds.”
Justice Department regulations stipulate that a special counsel can only be fired for a good cause, but Trump could have his attorney general rescind that regulation, Dorf said.
Firing Smith “is basically his right as president, though I would expect Smith to resign before then, just as a matter of course,” agreed Michel Paradis, an attorney who teaches national security and constitutional law at Columbia Law School.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to both federal indictments.
Asked for a comment Tuesday afternoon, Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign spokesman, told BI: “The Lyin’ Kamala Harris – Crooked Joe Biden Witch Hunts against President Trump have imploded just like their failed campaign, and should all be dismissed in light of the Supreme Court’s historic decision on immunity and other vital jurisprudence.”
A DOJ spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The federal election interference case
Even if Trump had lost, Smith’s prosecution of Trump on charges he tried to overturn the 2020 election wouldn’t necessarily have barrelled ahead at full speed.
Citizen Trump could have continued to challenge the election interference case on the grounds of presidential immunity, experts said.
In August, Smith won a revised indictment that narrowed the charges against Trump to cover acts he took as a private, office-seeking citizen.
The classified documents case
Another federal case against Trump, in which prosecutors alleged he failed to return classified government documents he took from the White House, was dismissed in July by the Trump-appointed US District Judge Aileen Cannon. She said Smith’s appointment violated the Constitution.
The dismissal, which argues Congress should have approved Smith’s appointment, was being challenged by Smith in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Smith’s appeal relied in large part on what he has called “the long tradition of special-counsel appointments by Attorneys’ General.”
Smith had been due to file a reply brief in the appeal on November 15. On Wednesday, he asked “to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.”
The Georgia election-interference case
The election interference case in Georgia against Trump and 18 of his associates remains in legal limbo, thanks to the defendants’ efforts to get the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, disqualified from the case.
In May, a Georgia appeals court agreed to consider Trump’s bid to get Willis removed from the case.
Attorneys for Trump and his codefendants argued that Willis had a conflict of interest in the case because she improperly benefited from a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the Atlanta lawyer she hired as a special prosecutor.
After an evidentiary hearing earlier this year, a judge ruled that Willis and her office could remain on the case so long as Wade stepped aside, and Wade announced his resignation hours later.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the Georgia indictment.
If Trump had lost the election, the case could have moved forward, though Trump would likely have moved to get it dismissed based on the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling.
As the election winner, however, he can file papers with the Georgia court “saying you got to put this on hold for the time that I’m president because it’s just not consistent with federal supremacy to have a state prosecuting a sitting president,” Dorf, a constitutional law expert, told BI on Tuesday.
“He doesn’t control the prosecutors, so you can’t fire them, and he can’t pardon himself because these are state crimes, so his only option really in the state cases is suspend them,” said Dorf.
This story has been updated to reflect news developments since its original publication date of November 5.
