A total of 19 legal proceedings against former president Donald Trump are pending, with roughly half of them alleging inappropriate behaviour while he was in office. The majority of the cases revolve around three main issues: financial misconduct that increased his wealth, his involvement in the uprising on January 6, 2021, and his alleged meddling in the 2020 presidential election. In the majority of these situations, Trump has denied misconduct. He has brought countersuits in several instances and has filed motions to dismiss several of them.
He is currently the subject of numerous lawsuits and investigations on both the criminal and civil litigation fronts, with other cases sure to come. Some of these are civil lawsuits related to his financial dealings before becoming president. Others involve libel lawsuits brought by women he is believed to have abused. There are also ongoing criminal investigations and civil lawsuits that look into his efforts to rig the 2020 election.
These cases relate to two important issues. First, will Trump continue to avoid legal responsibility despite being the target of so many lawsuits? Second, how would it affect Trump’s political and financial standing—as well as that of his family—if he were to be found guilty of breaking the law?
It is alleged that Trump’s real estate and golf resort businesses gave their executives expensive bonuses and privileges that weren’t disclosed to taxing authorities as income. Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization CFO who was a co-defendant in the case, pleaded guilty to the 15-year payroll tax evasion conspiracy. Weisselberg consented to serve 5 months in jail as part of his plea agreement, which was announced on August 18, 2022, and to reimburse $2 million in back taxes and penalties.
Weisselberg also consented to provide testimony for the prosecution in the event that the Trump Organization’s attorneys decide to contest the indictment at trial; the trial is scheduled for October 24. Weisselberg would go on to disclose to the jury a tax-dodging programme where business executives, including himself, received some income in off-the-books benefits such free housing, automobiles, and tuition reimbursement. If found guilty of participating in the conspiracy by concealing the money from federal, state, and local tax records and by failing to withhold and pay taxes on that remuneration, the Trump Organization could be hit with hefty fines.
In an inheritance battle, Mary Trump accuses Donald Trump of cheating her of millions of dollars. The case is still proceeding in a state court in New York, and the parties are currently arguing over former president Trump’s request to have the case dismissed.
The Trump family and their company are the targets of a class action lawsuit brought by a number of unnamed plaintiffs who claim the Trumps leveraged their reputation to con people into investing in worthless business possibilities. The Trumps are currently appealing the district court’s decision to reject their request to send the issue to arbitration.
Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump, and two right-wing militia groups are being sued by ten members of the House of Representatives on behalf of the NAACP for conspiring to obstruct Congress from tallying the Electoral College ballots on January 6.
Representative Eric Swalwell filed a federal court lawsuit against Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump Jr., and Congressman Mo Brooks on March 5, 2021, in relation to the rioting on January 6. Swalwell claims that when the defendants planned to obstruct the Electoral College Count on January 6, they did so in violation of federal civil rights statutes, including the Ku Klux Klan Act. Additionally, according to Swalwell, the defendants should be held accountable for willfully inflicting mental distress on members of Congress and recklessly breaking DC criminal laws against inciting.
But now Trump’s lawyers have succeeded in getting him into a legal bind he has never experienced. They have made a string of outrageous mistakes that have transformed the government’s document recovery effort into an ongoing criminal investigation of the former president that could lead to an unheard-of criminal indictment, whether out of incompetence or a desire to appease their notoriously rules-averse client. The judge’s decision on Monday to grant Trump’s request to name a third party to review the records might appear to be a victory, but it is only a partial response to a disaster that they could have prevented.
This case study of a bad defence by Trump’s attorneys. Trump’s team delivered boxes of disorganized records that contained classified documents that weren’t organised and didn’t appear to have been examined or catalogued before production, instead of working with the government to negotiate the return of its records when this was a civil matter. Once a criminal investigation was launched, rather than working with the DOJ to reach a settlement, Trump’s legal team lied to the federal authorities, turning themselves into prospective witnesses and subjects of the inquiry. This increased the likelihood that Trump would face charges.
Lawyers should have intervened and taken control of the matter after the conversations that took place between the National Archives and Records Administration and Trump’s representatives in 2021. NARA, which has criminal enforcement authority in contrast to the Justice Department, was attempting to collaborate with Trump’s staff to enable the return of what turned out to be thousands of pages of government records. When NARA, rather than the DOJ, was the counterparty, that was the moment to request adjustments from the government.
