Since taking office in January 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump has been besathed by civil lawsuits and criminal investigations into his inner circle.
Following the award of victory to Democrat Joe Biden on Saturday by major media, Trump’s legal problems are likely to deepen, because in January he will lose the protections the U.S. legal system provides to a president-in-office, exfiscales said.
Here are some of the criminal lawsuits and investigations that can haunt Trump when he leaves office.
A New York prosecutor
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who enforces New York State law, has been conducting a criminal investigation into Trump and the Trump Organization for more than two years.
The investigation originally focused on secret payments made by trump ex-worker Michael Cohen before the 2016 election to two women who claimed to have had sexual encounters with the president, something the president denies.
Vance, a Democrat, has suggested in recent court depositions that his investigation has expanded and could focus on bank, tax and insurance fraud, as well as forgery of trade records. Republican Trump says this is political harassment.
The case gained fame for Vance’s efforts to get eight years of Trump tax returns. In July, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s attempt to keep the statements secret and said the president is not immune to state criminal investigations while in office, but could lead other defenses to Vance’s subpoena.
Legal experts find it likely that Vance will eventually obtain the representative’s financial records.
The Justice Department said a representative-in-office cannot be charged. Vance is not subject to that policy because he is not a federal prosecutor, but he may have been reluctant to accuse Trump of doubts about whether the case is constitutional, said Harry Sandick, a former New Yorkfiscal.
“Those concerns will go away when Trump leaves office,” Sandick said.
The investigation is a threat to Trump, said Corey Brettschneider, professor of political science at Brown University. “The fact that they have issued the subpoenas and litigated up to the Supreme Court suggests that it is a very serious criminal investigation into the president,” he added.
Justice Department process?
Trump could face criminal prosecution launched by a Justice Department led by a new attorney general.
Some legal experts believe Trump could face federal income tax evasion charges, after The New York Times reported that the representative paid $750 in 2016 and 2017.
“You have all the material the New York Times brought out, which provides all sorts of signs of tax fraud,” said Nick Akerman, Dorsey &Whitney’s attorney and former federal prosecutor. However, he warned that it is not possible to know for sure until he saw all the evidence.
Trump rejected the Times’ information, tweeting that he had paid many millions of dollars in taxes, but that he was entitled to depreciation and tax credits.
Such a process would be highly controversial and the Justice Department could decide that accusing Trump is not in the public interest, even if there is evidence.
Biden has approached that question cautiously, saying it would not interfere with his Department of Justice’s trial. In August he told National Public Radio that filing criminal charges against his predecessor would be “something very, very unusual and probably not very, how can I say it? good for democracy.”
Civil fraud investigation
New York Attorney General Letitia James has an active tax fraud investigation into Trump and his family business, the Trump Organization.
The investigation of James, a Democrat, began after Trump’s ex-employee Cohen told Congress that the president inflicted values on his assets to save money on loans and insurance and disinfled them to reduce property taxes.
The Trump Organization has argued that the case has political motivations. The case is a civil investigation, which means it could result in economic sanctions but not in jail.
Eric Trump, son of the firm’s representative and executive vice president, had to testify in October so the attorney general described such as their close participation in one or more transactions being reviewed.
E. Jean Carroll
E. Jean Carroll, former elle magazine editor, sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after the president denied her accusation that he raped her in the 1990s at a Department Store in New York, while accusing her of lying to increase sales of a book.
In August, a state judge allowed the case to go ahead, meaning Carroll’s lawyers could ask for a DNA sample from Trump to compare it to a dress she said she wore at the store.
A federal judge in Manhattan rejected an attempt by the Justice Department to replace Trump with the federal government as indicted in the case. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said Trump did not make his statements about Carroll in the context of his work as president.
Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said she hoped biden’s Justice Department would abandon the effort to protect Trump from the case.
“It seems unlikely that the Department of Justice will continue what I consider a frivolous argument in a new administration,” said McQuade, a former federal prosecutor.
Summer Zervos
Trump also faces a lawsuit from Summer Zervos, a contestant on his 2005 television show “The Apprentice” who says he kissed her against her will at a 2007 meeting and then groping her at a hotel.
After Trump called Zervos a liar, she sued him for defamation. Trump said he’s immune to demand because he’s president.
The case has been on suspense as a New York State appeals court reviews a March 2019 decision that indicated Trump must face the case even if he is in office. The immunity argument would not apply once you are out of the office.
