Donald Trump is set to take the stand today to give historic testimony in his $250million New York civil fraud trial. 

It will be first time a former US president has testified as a defendant in a court trial in more than a century. 

The former president was previously found by a New York judge to have committed fraud by Judge Arthur Engoron, having “repeatedly” over-inflated his wealth by as much as $2.2 billion (£1.8billion).

In the current proceedings following the ruling, the state’s attorney general is seeking a $250 million judgement and a ban on Mr Trump doing business in New York.

It is only one in a list of intimidating legal issues that have beset the former president.

Since leaving office, Mr Trump has been embroiled in a number of cases, both criminal and civil. Several of them will reach the courts next year as he campaigns to return to the White House in 2024.

In addition to claims that he tried to alter the election result, he faces criminal charges for allegedly paying hush money to a porn star, and mishandling White House documents.

Here are the key cases, what’s going on, and where this could all finish.

Georgia election

Mr Trump has been charged with 13 counts relating to his alleged bid to overturn the election result in Georgia in 2020.

He has been charged with racketeering, violating an oath of office, and other crimes. A number of Trump associates were indicted alongside him, including his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, and lawyer John Eastman.

Mr Trump has always denied he acted improperly in Georgia in the aftermath of the election, as he sought to overturn the result in the state after narrowly losing the vote to Mr Biden.

In a leaked call with Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state, Mr Trump pleaded with him to “find” thousands of votes that would allow him to win the crucial state.

“There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated,” Mr Trump is reported to have said. “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

Mr Trump’s legal team has unsuccessfully argued that Fani Willis, a Georgia district attorney, should be barred from bringing charges against him and that a grand jury’s report should be thrown out.

The grand jury spent eight months interrogating some 75 witnesses and filed a lengthy report on Mr Trump’s conduct earlier this year.

Mr Trump surrendered at a Georgia jail in August to be arrested in connection with the charges, after his bail was set at $200,000 with strict conditions attached to it.

The judge has not yet set a trial date for Mr Trump. 

Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for Mr Trump, on Thursday pleaded guilty to aiding the former US president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state of Georgia, agreeing to testify against him if called. 

Scott Hall 

Other 2020 election and Jan 6 charges

Aside from Georgia, Mr Trump has been charged with four criminal counts over the events that led to the riot at the US Capitol on Jan 6 2021.

In a 45-page indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith, he was accused of trying to “overturn the legitimate results” of the 2020 presidential election.

He allegedly did so by pushing officials in swing states he had lost to use “fake electors” to ignore the popular vote, and pressuring the Justice Department to open “sham” election inquiries.

Six co-conspirators are referred to in the indictment but have not been named. However Mr Giuliani appears to be the individual named as “co-conspirator number one.”

Prosecutors say the former president also tried to convince Mike Pence, the then vice-president, to reject legitimate Electoral College votes.

Mr Trump faces two counts relating to trying to obstruct an official proceeding having allegedly tried to block Congress confirming Joe Biden’s victory.

The felony charge was used against numerous rioters who stormed the Capitol.

The charge for conspiracy against rights criminalises any joint effort to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate” people to stop them from enjoying their constitutional or federal rights.

Mr Trump’s campaign said the “persecutions” were “reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s”. It added: “These un-American witch-hunts will fail and President Trump will be re-elected to the White House.”

Mr Trump pleaded not guilty in a federal courthouse in Washington DC at the start of August.

Mr Smith, who the former president has labelled as “deranged”, said he would seek a “speedy trial” over the four criminal counts.

Even if Mr Trump is convicted, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination has insisted he will continue to run for the presidency.

There are no mandatory minimum sentences for any of the crimes Mr Trump is accused of.

Conspiracy to defraud the government is the least punitive of the four charges and is punishable by up to five years in prison.

Conspiracy against rights carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, while conspiracy to obstruct and obstructing an official proceeding both mean up to 20 years in prison.

In October, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan hit Mr Trump with a partial gagging which prohibits him from publicly disparaging witnesses, prosecutors and court staff members involved in the case. Mr Trump is appealing the order. 

Classified documents

Mr Trump faces 40 felony charges related to the mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

The indictment accused him of endangering national security by removing US secrets from the White House and storing them in “a ballroom, a bathroom and shower” at his Florida club.

Some were said to contain information about nuclear programmes, along with the defence and weapons capabilities of the US and foreign powers.

In July, three further charges were added after it was claimed that Mr Trump and two employees tried to delete Mar-a-Lago security footage before it could be handed over to the FBI.

A Trump spokesman has dismissed the case as “a continued desperate and flailing attempt” by the Biden administration “to harass President Trump and those around him”.

Mr Trump will go on trial on May 20 in the middle of the 2024 election campaign.

While lawyers had called for the case to be postponed indefinitely, citing the “challenges” of juggling a criminal trial and election, the date has been set for May 20 2024 in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Although a majority of state primaries will be finished by mid-May, a handful of votes will take place on May 14 and beyond.

Only two of the charges that Mr Trump faces carry a possible prison sentence of fewer than 10 years – the charges for scheming to conceal and making false statements and representations.

The 31 charges under the Espionage Act – the wilful retention of documents – carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

Prosecutors will have to prove that Mr Trump or his team – he is being tried alongside two co-defendants – “knowingly” mishandled materials “to impede, obstruct or influence” the investigation.

Charges for obstruction of justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record and concealing a document in a federal investigation all could mean a prison sentence of up to 20 years.

All charges are listed with a maximum fine of up to $250,000 (£198,000).

Stormy Daniels ‘hush money’

In April, Mr Trump was charged in New York with 34 counts of fraud in relation to “hush money” paid to the porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair.

The former president is said to have falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 payment.

According to the 16-page indictment, the payments aimed “to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election”.

Michael Cohen, Mr Trump’s former lawyer, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 after admitting tax evasion and campaign finance violations in relation to paying off Ms Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

Mr Trump pleaded not guilty to the 34-count indictment, which he called a “political witch-hunt, trying to take down the leading candidate, by far, in the Republican Party”.

Mr Trump will go on trial in New York on March 25 next year, in the middle of the Republican primaries.

The presidential candidate would normally expect to be travelling around the country on the campaign trail, but a judge warned him not to make any commitments for March 2024.

The multiple counts of falsifying business records carry a maximum four-year jail sentence if Mr Trump is found guilty.

Ms Daniels has downplayed the charges, however, arguing the former president does not deserve to be imprisoned.

“I don’t think that his crimes against me are worthy of incarceration,” she said on a TalkTV interview earlier this year.

Civil cases

New York fraud case

Mr Trump was in September found to have exaggerated his net worth and the value of his properties, including Trump Tower and his Mar-a-Lago resort.

In a civil fraud lawsuit in New York, Mr Trump was accused by the state’s attorney general of deliberately inflating the value of his assets by as much as $2.2 billion in an attempt to gain favourable terms from banks and insurance companies.

A non-jury trial overseen by Arthur Engoron, a New York judge, started in October and is expected to last until December. It will determine what penalties Mr Trump and his family members and business associates must pay.

The case could result in the sale of several major Trump properties, including Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street.

It may also give an indication of his true net worth, following decades of speculation.

Letitia James, the attorney general, is seeking damages of $250 million and a ban on Mr Trump operating businesses in the state.

Mr Engoron’s judgment said Mr Trump’s estimates of the value of his assets were based in a “fantasy world, not the real world”.

He ordered some of the property tycoon’s business licences in the city to be rescinded, though this ban was temporarily suspended on appeal on Friday.

The former president claims the case against him is politically motivated and the valuations the case is based on were “worthless”.

He has called Mr Engoron “unhinged”, “deranged” and a “political hack”.

E Jean Carroll

E Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist, is seeking additional damages from Mr Trump after he called her a “whack job” a day after he was found to have sexually abused her in a civil lawsuit.

Ms Carroll claimed that Mr Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in the mid-1990s. 

The civil jury rejected the rape claim but ordered the former president to pay $2 million in damages for sexual abuse.

In a televised town hall hosted by CNN the following day, Mr Trump accused her of telling a “made-up story”.

He told the audience at the event: “What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up and, within minutes, you’re playing hanky-panky in a dressing room, OK?”

Ms Carroll’s lawyers claim he “persisted in maliciously defaming Carroll yet again” and are seeking an eight-figure sum.

Ms Carroll can proceed with her defamation claim against Mr Trump after the Justice Department ruled his presidency did not shield him from liability.

It said it no longer believes Mr Trump could claim his comments about the right were carried out as part of his presidential duties.

Ms Carroll is seeking another $10 million from the former president over his CNN comments, which her lawyers labelled “malicious” and “defamatory”.

A US judge ruled that Mr Trump was liable for making defamatory statements against Ms Carroll and her second lawsuit would be for damages only, in a defeat for the former president. 

The former magazine columnist had already won $5 million from Mr Trump after he was found in May to have sexually abused and defamed her.