The tangle of legal cases surrounding Trump

Suspicions that a $130,000 payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016 might violate election finance laws have made Donald Trump the first former president to be indicted in US history.

But the real estate magnate and current Republican candidate for the White House in 2024 faces a whole tangle of other cases, criminal and civil, that can complicate his life and his electoral candidacy.

Several of them already have a date for their resolution throughout this year.

The causes that Trump has pending are focused, especially, on his finances;

in electoral matters;

in the insurrection of January 6, 2021, and in his handling of confidential state-owned documents after his departure from the White House.

Other civil lawsuits also include an accusation of rape.

In August of last year, FBI agents stormed Trump's Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, with a warrant.

They took 32 boxes with classified material from the tycoon's presidential era, including some with the "Top Secret" seal.

That operation ended months of requests to the politician's lawyers to clarify the fate of hundreds of official documents.

US law requires presidents and other senior officials to keep all official documents from their tenure and turn them over to the National Archives after they leave office.

In the case of Trump, the tycoon left a copious stash to transfer.

Early last year, his lawyers returned fifteen boxes of material on his behalf, and one more batch in June.

Then, Corcoran communicated in writing to the Department of Justice that there were no more documents in the possession of the former president.

The record at Mar-a-Lago made it clear that this was not the case.

The Department of Justice appointed a special prosecutor, Jack Smith, to investigate the case and try to find out if Trump kept all that material on purpose and if he misled his own lawyers when they assured that everything had already been returned.

The Justice Department's investigation appears to have advanced in recent days.

A Washington judge ruled two weeks ago that the evidence found by Smith is serious enough to lift the principle of attorney-client confidentiality.

It is something that United States law only allows in case of a well-founded suspicion that that relationship is being used to commit a crime: in the case of Trump, it would be obstruction of justice.

Trump's lawyers appealed the judge's decision.

But an appeals court did not block it.

Last week Evan Corcoran, legal counsel to the former president, testified before a grand jury.

The case now being brought against him by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg—the payment to Daniels by his former attorney and factotum, Michael Cohen—considers misused campaign money that was never recorded in the official accounts, something that the former president disputes.

But, in addition, Trump has another electoral case pending in Georgia.

There, the prosecutor Fani Willis, a Democrat, examines whether the then president tried to alter the result of the 2020 elections in that state.

The investigation originates from a call by the then president to the local secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffesperger, to "find" enough votes in his territory to turn around Biden's advantage in those elections.

But it has since expanded to include, among other things, other calls by Trump and his associates to Georgia officials after the election and baseless allegations of voter fraud made to state legislators.

The case, for which a hundred people have been investigated, has been presented to a special grand jury.

Willis must now decide whether to refer the case to a regular grand jury for criminal charges;

In January, the prosecutor noted that a decision was "imminent" and that making her report public could harm "future defendants."

The congressional commission that examined the events surrounding the mob assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 concluded its hearings last December after drawing the most complete picture to date of those events, Trump's role in that violence that it claimed several fatalities, and the president's efforts to cancel the results of the 2020 elections to continue in power.

Although that commission – dissolved with the beginning of the new legislative session in which the Republicans control the House of Representatives – cannot impute the former president, it has recommended that the Department of Justice do so.

On four counts: conspiracy to deceive the United States;

conspiracy to make false statements;

obstruction of an official process, and incitement to insurrection.

The Justice Department is continuing its own investigation, also led by Jack Smith.

The special prosecutor has summoned Trump's daughter Ivanka to testify;

her husband, Jared Kushner, and the vice president of the Trump era, Mike Pence.

The latter had announced that he would ignore the summons;

a court has just ordered you to obey the summons.

At the moment, it is unknown if Smith will end up indicting the former tenant of the White House.

Justice investigates especially the Trump rally that preceded the riots, where he urged his supporters to "fight like hell."

Also his attitude, halfway between laziness and complacency while his supporters forced his entry into the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying Biden's electoral victory.

In addition to the criminal case that could be opened against Trump for those events, Democrats and two police officers have filed civil lawsuits against the former president for "incitement" to assault.

The former White House resident then urged his supporters to "fight like hell" on Capitol Hill, tweeting his outrage at Pence for "not having the courage to do what it would take to protect our country."

The tycoon alleges that, as head of state, he enjoyed immunity at that time.

New York Attorney General Laetitia James has conducted a three-year investigation into a decade of business dealings in the mogul-turned-politician's real estate and golf course empire.

The lawyer maintains that there was a systematic fraud: before the banks, the businessman inflated the value of his properties to obtain extensive financing with the best conditions.

Before the treasury, that value was reduced to the credible minimum to avoid paying taxes.

James demands the return of the nearly 250 million dollars that, according to his calculations, the Trump empire defrauded.

If his thesis were accepted by the court, both Trump and his children would be banned from managing a company in the state of New York again.

The hearing is scheduled to begin on October 2.

Columnist Jean Carroll accuses Trump of rape, defamation, mistreatment and emotional distress.

According to the writer, the businessman raped her in a bathroom in a luxury department store in Manhattan in the 1990s.

The former president denies it, arguing that he "is not my type."

He also denied even knowing her, although a photo from then shows them together.

This civil lawsuit could be seen in court next month.

In addition, Catherine McCoy, on the other hand, accuses Trump, his company and his children of a scam related to the television program that the magnate presented in the early 2000s. That scam, she maintains, allowed the future president to pocket 8, 8 million dollars, while she and others lost thousands.

This hearing could begin at the end of next year.

For his part, Michael Cohen was demanding $20 million in compensation from his former boss for the time he spent in jail for lying to Congress and for financial crimes to protect Trump.

Although a court dismissed the suit, the former lawyer had stated that he intended to appeal.

Follow all the international information on