Former US president Donald Trump is facing four criminal indictments, all filed since March and raising the prospect that the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 White House race could end up navigating a series of trials as he campaigns.
Here are the key cases involving the 77-year-old one-term president.
Federal indictment
These are the most serious charges brought against the former head of state. Trump was formally served with his indictment in federal court in Washington on Thursday, August 3. The former president pleaded not guilty on all counts.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has been leading the investigation since November 2022, has already revealed that the grand jury (a panel of 23 citizens, 12 of whom are enough to decide on an indictment), which has been meeting for several months in Washington, had approved four charges against the former president:
The 45-page indictment follows the report of the House Committee on the December 2022 Capitol Hill assault, which called for criminal charges to be brought against the former president after an 18-month investigation and more than 1,000 witnesses interviewed. The grand jury was able to hear witnesses who had refused to appear before the congressional committee, such as former vice president Mike Pence and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
The prosecution's evidence shows that Trump was aware that he had lost the election and that the appeals had no legal basis. In particular, he had criticized Pence for being "too honest" and tried to make him believe that "major [electoral] infractions" had been uncovered by the Justice Department.
The investigation showed that when Trump failed to persuade federal officials to fraudulently swing the election in his favor, he and his team began creating fake lists of electors in certain key states, trying to force them on state legislatures so they would be transmitted to Congress for certification. These certificates were ultimately ignored by legislators. But if this scheme had succeeded, the Republican candidate could have retained the White House at Biden's expense.
The indictment also accuses him of having "exploited" the violence and chaos on Capitol Hill on the afternoon of January 6, 2021, to continue trying to convince lawmakers to postpone the certification of the November 2020 vote.
The Capitol investigation has already resulted in the criminal prosecution of nearly 1,000 rioters, with the first convictions handed down on November 30, 2022. Members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia, were convicted of sedition.
With less than six months to go before the start of the Republican primary, for which Trump remains the overwhelming favorite, Special Counsel Smith said he wanted to achieve a "speedy trial."
Trial scheduled
When Trump left the White House in January 2021, he took with him entire boxes of documents. Under a 1978 law, all US presidents are required to transfer all emails, letters and other working papers to the National Archives.
The following spring, the archives noticed that certain documents were missing and asked Trump to return them. This request went unheeded until January 2022, when the former president finally returned 15 boxes. On receiving these boxes, which included 184 classified documents, the archives asked the US Department of Justice to open an investigation.
In May 2022, the Justice Department officially requested the return of all government documents. After several witness hearings, the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded that the ex-president was probably keeping other documents in his luxurious residence at Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
In June 2022, his lawyers submitted a second batch of documents to the Justice Department, claiming that there were no more. But evidence obtained by federal investigators, including video surveillance footage of the villa, justified a search of Trump's home on August 8, 2022. The FBI seized an additional 33 boxes containing more than 11,000 government documents, 103 of which were classified; 18 were even classified as top secret. The search warrant cited a potential violation of the Espionage Act of 1917 – which prohibits the collection of national security information that could harm the US.
According to Special Counsel Jack Smith, in charge of the investigation, boxes were scattered at Mar-a-Lago in various locations, including a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom and a storage space. The Mar-a-Lago investigators claim that the obstruction was repeated and characterized by Trump suggesting to one of his lawyers that he did not possess the documents requested by the investigators. Trump and two of his assistants (Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira) are also accused of having asked an employee at his residence to delete video surveillance images from the Mar-a-Lago Club to prevent these images from being handed over to the courts.
On June 13, Trump appeared before a judge in Miami, Florida, to be served with 37 charges – including unlawful withholding of national security information, obstruction of justice and perjury – some of which carry a 10- or 20-year prison sentence. This was the first time that a former US president had been indicted at the federal level. Three new charges were later added to the indictment for the attempted deletion of surveillance footage. The billionaire chose to plead not guilty.
The trial date was set for May 20, 2024, just two months before the Republican nomination convention, for which Trump is a favorite. But the three new later charges could delay the proceedings.
Trial scheduled
Trump was formally charged on Tuesday, April 4, by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg with "orchestrating" a series of payments to cover up three embarrassing affairs before the 2016 election. He faces 34 charges.
The prosecutor detailed the alleged payments made by the former US president: a Trump Tower doorman, who claimed to have information about a child out of wedlock, received $30,000 to keep quiet; a woman who presented herself as a former mistress received $150,000 to keep a low profile; and finally a porn actress, presumably Stormy Daniels, received $130,000 to keep quiet about an alleged extramarital affair.
Trump pleaded not guilty. After his appearance, the former president walked out of court free. The trial date has been set for March 25, 2024, but the prosecutor has hinted that he is prepared to alter his timetable to give priority to a federal trial in another case.
Opened in August 2018 by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., and taken over since the summer of 2022 by his successor, Alvin Bragg, the investigation sought, among other things, to determine whether the former Republican president had been guilty of making a false statement, a misdemeanor offense, and above all of failing to comply with campaign finance laws, a criminal offense, by having omitted from his campaign expenses a payment of $130,000 (€120,000) to Stormy Daniels in 2016.
The scandal really emerged when the Wall Street Journal revealed, in early 2018, that the billionaire had bought the silence of Stephanie Clifford – Stormy Daniels' real name – by entering into a confidential agreement accompanied by a bank transfer of $130,000, executed on October 26, 2016, by his lawyer and then confidant Michael Cohen. The arrangement called for Clifford to keep quiet about an alleged sexual relationship she had with Trump in 2006, when he had been married to Melania Trump for a year. Trump has always denied the affair.
The investigation accelerated on October 21, 2018, when Cohen admitted to arranging the payment for Trump. The former president had initially denied any knowledge of the payment, before admitting that he had reimbursed his lawyer for it, describing it as a "simple private transaction." However, if the agreement with Stormy Daniels was indeed authorized, it could have been a campaign expense. However, the sum does not appear in the candidate's 2016 accounts but was listed as "legal fees" in the Trump Organization's documents. Cohen, who has since pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws and spent more than a year in prison, is now a central witness.
Indicted in Georgia
Donald Trump was indicted for the fourth time on August 14 by a Georgia grand jury in Atlanta's Fulton County for attempting to reverse the 2020 presidential election in this swing state. Trump was indicted on 13 counts, along with 18 other people, including his advisor, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and a Justice Department official under his administration, Jeffrey Clark. A total of 41 different charges have been brought against the 19 defendants, including "false statements and documents, usurpation of public office, forgery and use of forgeries," witness tampering, a series of computer crimes and perjury.
Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, had opened a criminal investigation on February 10, 2021, to determine whether Trump attempted to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the election results in his favor in this key state. On January 2, 2021, during a conference call disclosed by the media, Trump told Raffensperger: "I just want to find 11,780 votes," which was the number of ballots he needed to win over the state.
The call came after all of the Trump team's legal appeals to the courts failed, with multiple audits and recounts showing no evidence of massive voter fraud. It also followed multiple calls to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp in November and December 2020, as well as public demands on Raffensperger, threats of political retribution, public criticism and calls for Governor Kemp's resignation.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.