Walt Nauta

Charges: 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice and false statements and representations, among others

Summary: In the weeks before he left the White House in January 2021, Trump and his aides allegedly packed up hundreds of classified documents with his personal belongings and transported those documents to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Federal officials repeatedly tried to recover the classified materials, but prosecutors say Trump intentionally withheld dozens of documents from investigators and misled them as they attempted to locate the missing files.

• In May 2021, the National Archives sent a letter to Trump’s lawyers asking them to return all presidential records, after officials realized that several important documents were missing.

• In January 2022, Trump’s aides transferred 15 boxes of records to the National Archives. Some were marked as classified national security information, prompting a referral to the Department of Justice.

• In May 2022, a grand jury convened by the Department of Justice issued a subpoena to Trump, requiring him to return all remaining classified documents.

• In August 2022, a federal judge approved a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago amid concerns that additional classified documents remained in Trump’s possession. FBI agents carried out the search days later, and they recovered more than 100 documents with classified markings.

• In November 2022, shortly after Trump announced his re-election campaign, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to oversee both the documents case and the federal investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

• In June, Smith indicted Trump on 37 federal counts, including 31 violations of the Espionage Act. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges, and was released on bail.

• Judge Aileen Cannon set a trial start date of 14 August, in line with Smith’s request for a “speedy trial”. That date is widely expected to be pushed back. Smith has since requested an 11 December start date for the trial, while Trump’s team have asked the judge to postpone the trial indefinitely.

• In July, Trump’s valet and co-defendant in the documents case, Walt Nauta, pleaded not guilty to five criminal charges.

Hush-money case in New York

Status: Trump pleaded not guilty; trial forthcoming

Charges: 34 felony charges of falsifying business records

Summary: The case involves a hush-money scheme during the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to the adult film star Stormy Daniels to quash her story about having an extramarital affair with the former president. Trump has denied the affair took place. Prosecutors accuse the former president of illegally reimbursing Cohen for the hush-money payment by falsely classifying the transaction, executed by the Trump Organization, as legal expenses.

• In January 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen arranged a payment of $130,000 to Daniels a month before the 2016 election to prevent her from speaking publicly about the alleged affair with Trump.

• In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges of bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance violations in New York. Cohen claimed that Trump arranged the payment to Daniels, but the then-president was not charged.

• In July 2021, the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, were indicted on tax fraud charges.

• In August 2022, Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 charges, and he agreed to testify against the Trump Organization as part of his deal with prosecutors.

• In December 2022, the Trump Organization was found guilty on all counts of criminal tax fraud and falsification of business records.

• In January, the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, began presenting evidence to a grand jury on Trump’s role in the hush-money scheme.

• In March, Bragg’s office indicted Trump on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records.

• In April, Trump pleaded not guilty to all counts, and he was released from custody on his own recognizance. His next court date in the case is set for 4 December.

January 6 case in Washington

Status: Subpoenas issued by grand jury

Potential charges against Trump: Obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government and incitement of an insurrection

Summary: On 6 January 2021, a group of Trump’s supporters staged a violent attack on the US Capitol in an effort to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. A bipartisan Senate report later concluded that seven people died in connection to the insurrection. The House impeached Trump for inciting the insurrection, but the former president was acquitted by the Senate. He now faces potential criminal charges over his role in the attack.

• In June 2021, the House of Representatives voted to create a select committee to investigate the causes and consequences of the January 6 attack.

• In May 2022, a grand jury investigating the January 6 attack issued a subpoena to the National Archives requesting all White House documents given to the House select committee, indicating that federal prosecutors were following similar lines of inquiry.

• In November 2022, shortly after Trump announced his re-election campaign, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to oversee both the federal investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the classified documents case.

• In December 2022, the House select committee voted unanimously to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for potential criminal charges over his role in the attack. The suggested charges include obstructing an official proceeding, conspiring to defraud the government and inciting or assisting an insurrection.

• The grand jury has continued to issue subpoenas and hear witness testimony in recent weeks. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser, testified before the panel in June, the New York Times reported.

• Trump said on Truth Social on 18 July that he received a letter informing him that he is a target in Smith’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. According to the Guardian’s reporting, Smith’s letter cited three potential charges against Trump, including conspiracy to violate civil rights and obstruction of an official proceeding.

2020 election meddling case in Georgia

Status: Grand jury report finished; charging decisions expected this summer

Potential charges against Trump: Election code violations

Summary: As part of his frantic efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Trump infamously instructed the Georgia secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to rob Joe Biden of his win in the battleground state. The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has been investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia for more than two years.

• In May 2022, a special purpose grand jury was seated to hear evidence in the case.

• In August 2022, prosecutors informed Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s former lawyers, that he was a target of the grand jury’s investigation.

• In January, the grand jury finished its final report after hearing from 75 witnesses, and a judge recommended that the panel be dissolved. Willis suggested at the time that decisions of charges in the case were “imminent”, but no such announcement has yet been made.

• In February, portions of the grand jury report were made public, although a judge ruled the entirety of the report would remain secret. The publicly released portions revealed that the grand jury suspected multiple witnesses may have lied and committed perjury, but they did not shed light on whether Trump will face criminal charges.

• In late February, the forewoman of the grand jury revealed the panel had recommended that multiple people be indicted for interfering with the election. The names of those people were not disclosed, but the forewoman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “You’re not going to be shocked.”

• In April, Willis said she expected to announce charging decisions this summer. According to two people with knowledge of the matter, Willis has signalled to her team that charging decisions may come starting the final week of July.

• In May, a court filing showed that half of the so-called fake electors who sought to declare Trump the winner of Georgia had accepted immunity deals from prosecutors.

E Jean Carroll lawsuits in New York

Status: First lawsuit going to trial; second lawsuit on appeal

Allegations against Trump: Defamation and sexual abuse

Summary: The case centers on allegations by writer E Jean Carroll that Trump sexually assaulted her at a department store in 1996. Trump has denied the allegations while repeatedly attacking Carroll’s character, and his actions are now at the center of two civil lawsuits.

• In June 2019, Carroll published an excerpt of her memoir, in which she accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. Trump quickly issued a statement denying the accusation, claiming he had never met Carroll.

• In November 2019, Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump, accusing him of having “smeared her integrity, honesty and dignity”.

• The case was repeatedly delayed amid legal wrangling over whether the federal government was allowed to step in to represent Trump in the case because he was a government official. A judge eventually rejected that effort, ruling the justice department could not fill Trump’s shoes in the case because he was not acting in his official capacity as a government official when he made the defamatory comments about Carroll.

• In November 2022, on the same day that the Adult Survivors Act went into effect in New York, Carroll filed a second lawsuit against Trump accusing him of defamation and sexual battery. The Adult Survivors Act gave victims of sexual violence over the age of 18 a one-year window to file civil lawsuits against their alleged abusers, despite the statute of limitations.

• In March, a judge denied Carroll’s request to consolidate the two lawsuits into one. Instead, the first lawsuit was put on pause as the second lawsuit moved forward.

• In April, the trial for Carroll’s second lawsuit began. Carroll testified to the New York jury that Trump forcibly pulled down her tights in the department store dressing room, and the experience left her unable to explore romantic relationships. She also claimed that she was fired from her job as an advice columnist for Elle Magazine, where she worked for 26 years, because of Trump’s defamatory comments.

• In May, the jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, although the former president was not found liable for rape. The jury awarded Carroll about $5m in damages, but because it was a civil case, Trump did not face criminal charges in connection to the judgment. Trump has filed an appeal in the case.

• In June, a federal judge ruled that the original defamation lawsuit, in which Carroll is seeking damages of $10m, could move forward. A trial date has been set for January 2024.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/18/donald-trump-what-how-many-criminal-charges