After the 2024 election Next week, on November 5, former President Donald Trump will face one of two fates: a return to the Oval Office, or years of criminal proceedings, and possibly incarceration, experts say.
Perhaps no candidate in American history has faced such serious personal stakes on Election Day.
Trump’s third presidential campaign ran parallel to the four criminal cases against him – two in hesitant fits and starts, one verse dismissal and another moving relatively quickly toward a potential conviction.
Their future may very well depend on whether Trump is elected.
Hush money case in New York
A unanimous jury convicted Trump guilty in May, 34 counts of falsifying business records. The seven-week trial focused on a scheme that Trump approved while president, in which he and others hid a payment to an adult film star to prevent her from spreading a claim that which she and Trump had a sexual relationship years before.
The $130,000 payment was made days before the 2016 presidential election. The consequences are expected to be revealed days after the 2024 election.
Trump’s sentencinginitially scheduled for July 11 then postponed again to September, is set for November 26.
Former New York prosecutor Bennett Gershman said that even if Trump won the election, “I see no legal reason why sentencing would be delayed.”
Whether he is president-elect or a defeated candidate again, one thing is relatively certain, said Gershman, a professor at Pace University Law School. Even if Trump loses the election and is sentenced to jail or prison, it could be years before he is incarcerated.
“It will take time for the appeal to be dismissed,” Gershman said. And if Trump wins, the appeal process or the award itself would likely be delayed until after his presidency.
“He would be a president with 34 felony convictions, and maybe he’s a felon sentenced to two or three years in prison, and he’s leading the nation,” Gershman said. “All this is new, but it no longer comes from an imaginary land.”
Special advocate cases
Election 2020
Trump was indicted in August 2023 in a case brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith. He was indicted on four counts stemming from his conduct after the 2020 election, as he and others sought to leak the results, which showed Trump losing to Joe Biden.
The case ended when Trump filed a petition for presidential immunity before the Supreme Court, which ruled in July that former presidents were immune from prosecution for official acts performed while in office. White House.
In August, a federal grand jury returned a quashing the indictment which restricted the allegations against him to comply with the high court’s new framework for presidential immunity.
Handling of sensitive documents
Smith is also overseeing a lawsuit in federal court in Florida in which Trump is accused of mishandling sensitive government documents after leaving the White House in January 2021. That case was dismissed in July by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon , who said in a 93-page document. order finding that Smith had been appointed illegally.
Smith’s office appeals this decision, arguing that Cannon had ruled incorrectly. Trump’s team has seized on his decision and argued that it provides grounds to similarly dismiss the election case brought by Smith.
Arguments on both sides could be futile if Trump wins the election, according to CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman, who said his administration’s Justice Department would likely drop the charges.
“If Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, it would logically follow that his attorney general and the new Justice Department would dismiss cases brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith,” Klieman said.
Trump himself said that if elected, Smith would be out of a job.
“It’s so simple: I would fire him in two seconds,” Trump said in an October 24 radio interview.
Fulton County, Georgia, Case on the 2020 Elections
Trump was among 19 people indicted in a state case in Georgia in August 2023, accusing the group of a racketeering enterprise that sought to illegally thwart Trump’s election defeat in the state.
Five of the 13 charges against Trump were dismissed, although Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis appealed the dismissal of three of them and will likely appeal the others.
The case has been on hold since June, when the state Court of Appeals agreed to determine whether Willis should be removed from the case for having a romantic relationship with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
If Trump wins, the Fulton County criminal case will go from stay to “crash stop,” said John Acevedo, a law professor at Emory University.
“All defendants have the right to confront witnesses, but you can’t really have the president of the United States sitting in a courtroom in Atlanta,” Acevedo said.
One person who shares this view is Trump’s lead lawyer in the Georgia case, Steve Sadow. He said at a December 2023 hearing in that case that if Trump wins, any trial would have to be postponed until at least 2029.
Sadow cited the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and argued that lawsuits against the state would essentially be outweighed by the needs of the federal government while Trump was in the White House.
“I believe that the Supremacy Clause and his duties as President of the United States [mean] this trial would not take place until after his term,” Sadow said.
