Donald Trump: A busy man (in court) running for president

"Cass, if I can get through this job and manage to keep [Trump] out of jail, I'll have done a good job." - Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, according to aide Cassidy Hutchinson.

Donald Trump's legal dance card is "full up" for 2023 and 2024.  And may get fuller.

As of today the GOP's leading presidential contender faces 91 criminal charges in four separate jurisdictions, adding up to three civil trials, three criminal trials with one more pending. And an eighth trial - yes, 8th - possibly lurking out west in Arizona.

Here is a quick status update on the trials awaiting Trump beginning next month.

• The New York Attorney General is suing the Trump family for $250 million. The civil trial is scheduled to begin in Manhattan next Monday, Oct. 2. 
• Trump, who lost a $5 million defamation lawsuit against E. Jean Carroll earlier this year, now faces a $10 million defamation lawsuit by Carroll, scheduled to go to trial Jan. 15, 2024. Trump is trying to delay trial or even have the case dismissed, arguing what he said about Carroll while president is protected speech.
• The Trump family is being sued by unhappy viewers of "The Apprentice" for an alleged scam they pulled. A trial date of Jan. 29, 2024 has been set.
• Trump was indicted on four felony charges for his part in the Jan. 6 effort to overturn the 2020 election. The trial is set to begin March 4, 2024.
• Trump was arraigned last April and pled not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records. His trial in a Manhattan criminal court is scheduled to begin March 25, 2024. The judge has indicted he is open to changing the starting date.
• Florida Federal Judge Aileen Cannon has set a trial date of May 20, 2024 in the Justice Department's case against Trump for retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump has pled not guilty to 40 felony counts in the case.
• On Aug. 14 Trump was indicted on 13 felony charges by a Fulton County, Georgia grand jury for illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election in that state. The court has set a trial date of Oct. 23, 2023 for Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro.  The trial date for Trump and the other 16 defendants has not been set.
• And, if reporting is to be believed, there is a possibility that Arizona will indict the former president for his efforts to overturn the election in that state. (For details, see "Justice Department, states investigate and file charges against GOP plot to submit fake Electoral College votes" below.)

Stay tuned.

For a timeline of the many legal dates facing the former president as well as key dates for related cases and the GOP primary, see below near the bottom of the blog, "Calendar: Trials, hearings, deadlines and the GOP primary."

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Blog updated Sept. 29

For daily updates, follow me on X at Raygiles1

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Blog Index

Scheduled trials

• New York AG sues Trump for $250 million, trial set for October 2
  

• E. Jean Carroll sues Trump, wins $5 million judgment, sues him again for $10 million, second trial set for Jan. 15, 2024
• Trump family accused of pushing pyramid scheme, trial set for Jan. 29, 2024

• Federal grand jury indicts Donald Trump for Jan. 6 coup attempt, trial set for March 4, 2024

• Manhattan grand jury indicts Trump on criminal charges, trial set for March 25, 2024, plus Legal Analysis

• Trump indicted for refusing to return top-secret government documents; judge sets May 20, 2024 trial date, plus, timeline of Mar-a-Lago documents case

Lawsuits

• Will the Supreme Court - or state courts - decide Trump's 2024 ballot fate?

• Partner, estate of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick blame Trump, followers for his death
• NAACP, Democrat House members file lawsuit for Jan. 6 attack on Capitol; Trump, Pence don't see "eye to eye" on Jan. 6 violence
• Trump and GOP face lawsuit claiming they violated the Ku Klux Klan Act
  
• Rep. Swalwell files lawsuit alleging Trump, others responsible for Jan. 6 riot
• Trump faces five separate lawsuits by Capitol and D.C. police for Jan. 6 riot
• Smartmatic sues Fox News for $2.7 billion

Investigations

• Georgia county grand jury indicts Trump and 18 allies for effort to overturn state election, trials begin Oct. 23
  
• House Select Committee completes investigation of Jan. 6 riot, forwards criminal referrals to DOJ; plus 68 Days That Will Live in Infamy - Oct. 31, 2020 thru Jan. 6, 2021

• Justice Department, states investigate and file charges against GOP plot to submit fake Electoral College votes 
  

• Truth Social, Trump's go-to platform, struggles with investigations, money problems
• Trump's A-Team: Meadows, Powell, Giuliani and Eastman have all been indicted

Disposition of five Trump-related cases

• Dominion sues Fox News for $1.6 billion, settles for $787.5 million and Tucker Carlson's hide
• Trump Organization found guilty on 17 counts of tax fraud, other crimes
• DC Attorney General, Trump Organization settle case over misuse of Inaugural funds
  
• Judge dismisses Trump lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, James Comey and others; imposes $1 million fine on Trump and lawyer 

• Democrat lawsuit seeking Trump's Washington D.C. hotel records dropped

Calendar: Trials, hearings, deadlines and the GOP primary

List of news and commentary sources used in blog

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Scheduled trials

New York AG sues Trump for $250 million, trial set for October 2

The Latest:  An appeals court rejected Donald Trump's bid to delay a civil trial in a lawsuit brought by New York's attorney general, allowing the case to proceed days after a judge ruled the former president committed years of fraud and stripped him of some companies as punishment, the Associated Press reported Sept. 28.

The decision, by the state's intermediate appellate court, clears the way for Judge Arthur Engoron to preside over a non-jury trial starting Oct. 2 in Manhattan.

Trump plans to show up in person for at least the first week of a civil trial set to open in New York on Monday in which he and his business empire are accused of persistent fraud, according to court filings, Politico reports.

New York Attorney General Letitia James plans to call former President Trump and three of his adult children to testify at his civil fraud trial set to begin in New York next Monday, CNBC reported Sept. 28.

Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump are among the 28 names on James' list of witnesses to be called in the case. Trump's sons, who are also defendants in the case, have run the company since Trump was elected president in 2016.

Also on James' list are Michael Cohen, Trump's former fixer and personal lawyer, and Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization.

The Washington Post reported Sept. 29, "A New York judge's sweeping ruling punishing Donald Trump for years of alleged business fraud could force the former president to sell the New York real estate empire he built over decades that helped catapult him to fame, television stardom and the White House..

"The decision in a civil case accusing Trump of illegally inflating his property values orders the cancellation of his New York business licenses, potentially wresting from his control of dozens of properties worth hundreds of millions of dollars."

Experts said the full ramifications of the ruling would only emerge with further input from the judge and noted Trump has avenues to appeal it. But they said it seems clear that Trump's ability to control his New York properties is in grave and immediate jeopardy because he cannot operate them without a state license.

"The judge has said this is a matter of such urgency that these LLCs need to stop operating right now," said Cornell Law School professor Celia Bigoness.

At trial beginning Oct. 2, Engoron will consider even bigger penalties that James has requested, among them $250 million in fines, a prohibition on Trump and the company from obtaining new loans by any bank chartered in New York for five years, and a ban on Trump, his adult sons and executives from operating or owning businesses in the state in the future.

If the judge rules with Trump on whether he can own other businesses, the former president and current leading Republican candidate could possibly create a new series of LLCs and transfer his properties into the new entities, subject to the approval of a receiver.

But given the judge's insistence that Trump be stripped of his existing licenses, experts said that did not seem the most likely outcome.

Background: The genesis of the New York Attorney General Letitia James' $250 million lawsuit against Donald Trump et al announced in September, 2022 began in 2006 when Trump had a one-night affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. Ten years later and one month before the 2016 presidential election, GOP candidate Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 to keep her mouth shut about the affair.

The attorney general's initial investigation began in March 2019 after Cohen testified before Congress and detailed Trump's alleged fraud in New York State, claiming the Trump Organization had lied about the value of its assets in order to secure loans and insurance and to reduce its tax liability. (Blog editor's note: When James announced her office's $250 million lawsuit against Trump et al for fraud on Sept. 21, 2022, she credited Cohen's testimony for triggering the investigation.)

Early in the investigation, Alan Garten, general counsel of the Trump Organization, told the New York Times, "Everything was done in strict compliance with applicable law and under the advice of counsel and tax experts." He added, "All applicable taxes were paid and no party received any undue benefit."

The attorney general's office subsequently deposed Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, in October, 2020. The New York Times reported that during his deposition, Eric Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against incriminating himself in response to more than 500 questions. Allen Weisselberg, CFO of the Trump Organization, also pleaded the Fifth repeatedly during his Feb. 24, 2020 deposition.

On Jan. 18, 2022 James alleged in a court filing that Trump's business inflated the value of its properties and misstated his personal worth in representations to lenders, insurance brokers and other players in his real estate empire, the Washington Post reported.

Two examples: According to Insider, an apartment leased by Ivanka Trump from the Trump Organization was given a sky-high public valuation of $25 million but offered to her for purchase for $8.5 million.

The Times reported Trump claimed his triplex apartment spanned 30,000 square feet, giving it an eye-popping value of $327 million. In truth, the apartment was 10,996 square feet. "Mr. Trump's long-serving chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, later acknowledged to investigators that the company had overvalued the apartment by 'give or take' $200 million."

James alleged, "Thus far in our investigation, we have uncovered significant evidence that suggests Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit."

And then on Feb. 14 Trump's long-time accounting firm announced it had ended its relationship with the Trump Organization. USA Today reported the firm, Mazars, said that a decade of Trump Organization financial statements "should no longer be relied upon."

On April 25, the district attorney's office told a court that evidence uncovered in the investigation into the Seven Springs Estate in Westchester County, New York, and the Trump National Golf Club in L.A., "indicates that the Trump Organization submitted fraudulent or misleading valuations of conservation easements to the Internal Revenue Service."

Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump sat for questioning in the investigation - Ivanka on Aug. 3 and Don Jr. on July 28. Trump Jr. did not assert his Fifth Amendment rights. He denied any role in preparing the company's financial statements.

Former President Trump completed his court-ordered testimony on Aug. 10 - raising his right hand, swearing to tell the truth and then declining to answer most of the questions. He invoked the Fifth protecting himself from self-incrimination 440 times during the four-hour interview.

And then on Sept. 21, James filed the $250 million lawsuit against Trump, the Trump Organization, his three oldest children, and two top executives, Allan Weisselberg and Jeff McConney. James' statement reads, in part, "The lawsuit alleges that Donald Trump, with the help of his children Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump, and senior executives at the Trump Organization, falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to satisfy continuing loan covenants, to induce insurers to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and at lower premiums, and to gain tax benefits, among other things. From 2011-2021, Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization knowingly and intentionally created more than 200 false and misleading valuations of assets on his annual Statements of Financial Condition to defraud financial institutions."

The potential civil penalties would destroy Trump's New York business. The lawsuit seeks to:

• Permanently bar Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump from serving as an officer or director in any corporation or similar business entity registered and/or licensed in New York state;
• Bar Trump and the Trump Organization from entering into any New York state commercial real estate acquisitions for a period of five years;
• Bar Trump and the Trump Organization from applying for loans from any financial institution registered with the New York Department of Financial Services for a period of five years.

James said her office also sent criminal referrals on the case to both the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York in Manhattan and the IRS in Washington, D.C.

James' office asked a judge to bar former President Trump from moving his businesses to a new holding company, CNBC reported Oct. 13. (On Sept. 21, the same day that Attorney General James sued Trump and the other defendants, her office saw that the Trump Organization had registered with New York's secretary of state a new company, called "Trump Organization II LLC." That new firm is incorporated in Delaware.) The request was spurred by concerns that the AG's office would have difficulty getting Trump to pay a fine, if he loses the suit, as a result of his assets being held by a company that is not named as a defendant in the case.

New York state Judge Arthur Engoron on Nov. 3 ordered an independent monitor be appointed to oversee the Trump Organization before the case by the state's attorney general against Trump's company goes to trial, Reuters reported. In October, James had asked the Manhattan-based judge to appoint a watchdog to halt "staggering" fraud at the company and keep the Trumps from transferring assets out of state.

Barbara Jones, a retired federal judge, was subsequently appointed to keep an eye on the company's future financial filings. Judge Engoron empowered Jones to monitor the company's new financial filings, including any submitted to banks, insurers, and tax authorities.

James' $250 million lawsuit against Trump and his children will go on trial October 2.

Trump returned to New York City April 13 to sit for a second deposition as part of New York Attorney General Letitia James' $250 million civil fraud lawsuit, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

According to reports, Trump testified for nearly seven hours. (The first time he testified - last Aug. 10 - he took the Fifth for most of the four-hour long interview.)

After Trump's second round of testimony, one of his lawyers said the former president had spent nearly seven hours "describing in detail his extraordinary business success and how the transactions at the center of this case were wildly profitable for the banks and for the Trump entities.

Ivanka Trump has hired her own counsel to represent her, Forbes reported April 26. And on June 27, an appeals court dropped her from the lawsuit, ruling she was not involved in the management of the company during the time of the alleged crimes.

Attorney General James asked a judge Aug. 30 for a partial summary judgment against Trump, citing what she called a "mountain of undisputed evidence" of false and misleading financial statements.  "Based on the undisputed evidence, no trial is required for the Court to determine that Defendants presented grossly and materially inflated asset values in the SFCs [financial statements] and then used those SFCs repeatedly in business transactions to defraud banks and insurers," James wrote.

On Sept. 8, Bloomberg reported that Attorney General James accused Trump of exaggerating his net worth by as much as $3.6 billion a year by inflating the value of his biggest assets. The new calculation is part of James's request that a New York state judge hold Trump liable for fraud even before her $250 million suit against him, his two eldest sons and his company goes to trial on Oct. 2. James alleges Trump exaggerated his wealth to dupe banks and insurers into giving him better terms on financial transactions.

Judge Arthur Engoron found Donald Trump and his adult sons liable for fraud and canceled the Trump Organization's business certification, saying the Trumps provided false financial statements for roughly a decade, CNN reported Sept. 27.

David A. Graham at The Atlantic wrote: "The surprise is not that Trump and his co-defendants, including his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, committed fraud. What is surprising is that he could finally be punished for it—and quite harshly. The scheme that New York Attorney General Letitia James alleged last year was simple. When Trump wanted to lower his taxes, he'd claim a low valuation for a property. When he wanted to get cheap loans, he would inflate the valuation. This allowed him to inflate his claimed net worth each year, which let him obtain loans on better terms by personally guaranteeing them. Evidence of this pattern had already turned up in reporting, especially by WNYC and ProPublica, and James's case offered much more."

Judge Engoron ordered the cancellation of the business certificates for firms in the state owned by former President Donald Trump and others associated with the Trump Organization, casting into doubt the future of the private sector empire on which Trump has built his reputation for business acumen, ABC News reported Sept. 28.  At trial beginning Oct. 2, Engoron will consider even bigger penalties that James has requested, among them $250 million in fines, a prohibition on Trump and the company from obtaining new loans by any bank chartered in New York for five years, and a ban on Trump, his adult sons and executives from operating or owning businesses in the state in the future.

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E. Jean Carroll sues Trump, wins $5 million judgment, sues him again for $10 million, second trial set for Jan. 15, 2024

The Latest:   A federal appeals court will quickly consider former President Trump's claim that presidential immunity protects him from being held liable for statements he made in 2019 when he denied that he sexually attacked a New York writer in the 1990s, the Associated Press reported Sept. 13.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued the order to expedite the appeal a day after Trump attorney Alina Habba told a three-judge panel of the court that the appeal raised "an important question that will affect the delicate balance between the judiciary and the executive branch for many years to come."

The 2nd Circuit set a schedule for written arguments to be filed within a month.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan has set a Jan. 15 date for a jury to decide damages in a long-delayed lawsuit brought by the writer, E. Jean Carroll. She claimed Trump defamed her in 2019 when he said she fabricated claims in a memoir in which she said Trump sexually attacked her in a luxury Manhattan department store in 1996.

In May, a jury rejected Carroll's claim that Trump raped her in the department store's dressing room, but it concluded that he sexually abused her and awarded her $5 million.

In its two-page order, the 2nd Circuit denied an application by Trump to stay lower-court proceedings during the appeal, but it said it was in the interest of all sides for the appeals court to resolve the issue of presidential immunity expeditiously.

Judge Kaplan ruled that Trump is civilly liable for defamatory statements he made about writer E. Jean Carroll in 2019 when she went public with claims he had raped her decades earlier, CNBC reported Sept 6.

Judge Kaplan said the upcoming trial for Carroll's lawsuit against Trump will only deal with the question of how much the former president should pay her in monetary damages for defaming her.

He cited the fact that jurors at a trial in a separate but related lawsuit in May found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a New York department store in the mid-1990s, and defamed her in statements he made when he denied her allegation last fall.

(See "Georgia county grand jury indicts Trump and 18 allies for effort to overturn state election, trials begin Oct. 23" below for commentary on issue of presidential immunity.)

Explanation of two lawsuits:

Lawsuit #1 - This lawsuit was filed in 2019 after President Trump allegedly defamed Carroll but for four years has been held up by a dispute on the question of whether Trump was acting as President or an individual when he allegedly defamed Carroll.  On May 22, 2023 Carroll amended the lawsuit - she is now seeking $10 million - after Trump again allegedly defamed her again, this time days after a jury, in lawsuit #2, awarded her $5 million. A federal judge has set a January 15, 2024 trial date. In July, 2023, the DOJ reversed its original position and ruled that Trump was acting as a private citizen - not as President - when he allegedly defamed Carroll in 2019.

Lawsuit #2 - Long after leaving the White House, Trump attacked Carroll on Truth Social, calling her allegations "a hoax and a lie," triggering the defamation and sexual battery charges in Carroll's second lawsuit, which concluded May 9 with a Manhattan federal court jury awarding Carroll $5 million. See "Day-by-day trial notes" below.

Background: Former President Trump was sued in federal court for defamation by writer/columnist E. Jean Carroll, who wrote in a 2019 magazine article that Trump raped her in the mid-1990s in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury New York department store.

Carroll filed her first lawsuit against Trump in November 2019 claiming then-President Trump defamed her when he told a reporter "she's not my type" and accused Carroll of lying "in order to increase book sales, carry out a political agenda, advance a conspiracy with the Democratic Party, and make money." President Trump also claimed he never had met Carroll. (As to his claims "she's not my type" and that he had never met Carroll, during his Oct. 19, 2022 deposition for the lawsuit, Trump was shown a photo of the two of them at a party years ago and mistook Carroll for his second wife, Marla Maples.)

On Jan. 9, 2020, a New York State Supreme Court judge denied President Trump's request to dismiss the defamation lawsuit. In a highly controversial move, the DOJ then stepped in to defend then-President Trump, claiming his denunciation of Carroll was part of his official duties and, therefore, the United States, and not President Trump, was the defendant in the case. But Carroll's attorneys argued that "only in a world gone mad could it somehow be presidential, not personal, for Trump to slander a woman who he sexually assaulted."

On Oct. 27 Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan turned down the government's bid to make the United States the defendant. Trump's comments concerned events that had occurred "several decades before he took office," Judge Kaplan ruled, and had "no relationship to the official business of the United States."

But in the final days of Trump's presidency in January 2021, the Justice Department appealed that decision in the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, claiming the president of the United States "acts within the scope of his office when he responds to public critics."

And then in a move that frustrated many Democrats, the Biden Justice Department argued in a brief filed June 7, 2021 that it should be permitted to substitute itself for former President Trump as the defendant in the lawsuit. Justice Department lawyers wrote in a brief to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, "This case does not concern whether Mr. Trump's response was appropriate. Nor does it turn on the truthfulness of Ms. Carroll's allegations." Rather, the lawyers wrote, because they believe Trump was an employee of the government and that he acted "within the scope of employment," the department, rather than Trump personally, should serve as defendant in the case.

CNN reported the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit on Sept. 27 opened the door to allowing the Justice Department to shield former President Trump for his conduct while president when they sent the case to the D.C. Court of Appeals to resolve the question: Was Trump a federal employee when he rebutted Carroll's story or was he acting purely on his own as a private citizen?

And on Oct. 12, 2022 the now former president lashed out again at Carroll, this time on Truth Social. "E. Jean Carroll is not telling the truth, is a woman who I had nothing to do with, didn't know, and would have no interest in knowing her if I ever had the chance."

"She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, 'swooned' her," Trump wrote, in an off-the-cuff euphemism for Carroll's accusations of rape. "It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years. And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!"

On Nov. 9, Bloomberg reported that Trump urged the District of Columbia's highest local court to adopt his argument that he was acting in the interests of the American people and within the boundaries of his official duties as president when he made allegedly defamatory remarks while denying a rape claim by Carroll.

President Biden's Justice Department sided with Trump, citing similar cases and the claim that his comments about Carroll were, in fact, made in his duties as president.

And then Trump was sued again - this time in state court - by Carroll on Thanksgiving Day, 2022, Reuters reported.

In a complaint filed in Manhattan, the former Elle magazine columnist also accused Trump of battery in the alleged encounter at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan.

Carroll, 78, brought the battery claim in her second lawsuit under New York's Adult Survivors Act, a new law giving sexual assault victims a one-year window to sue their alleged abusers, even if the abuse occurred long ago and statutes of limitations have expired. (The statute of limitations for most criminal offenses is decided by individual states. In New York, a law passed in May 2022 extended the five-year statute of limitations on civil rape cases under the reasoning that victims of sexual assault often needed more time to come forward.)

An earlier version of the second complaint, filed on Nov. 17, states the following:

"Trump's actions constitute sexual offenses as defined in Article 130 of the New York Penal Law, including but not limited to rape in the first degree (§ 130.35), rape in the third degree (§ 130.25), sexual abuse in the first degree (§ 130.65), sexual abuse in the third degree (§ 130.55), sexual misconduct (§ 130.20), and forcible touching (§ 130.52)."

On Dec. 1, Carroll's lawyers urged the District of Columbia's highest local court to reject the "troubling" position by Trump and the Biden Justice Department in her original suit that elected officials are immune against defamation claims whenever they speak about matters of public concern, Bloomberg reported.

"Presidents are free to deny allegations of misconduct," Carroll's lawyers wrote in a brief. "But a White House job is not a promise of unlimited authority to brutalize victims of prior wrongdoing through vicious, personal, defamatory attacks."

On Dec. 21, Trump asked a federal court to dismiss Carroll's second lawsuit, arguing that a New York law allowing the writer to sue the former U.S. president over claims that he raped her decades ago is unconstitutional.

Trump alleged in the motion to dismiss Carroll's second lawsuit that the law, the Adult Survivors Act, runs afoul of the New York state constitution's due process protections. He also called the additional defamation claim Carroll claims in the lawsuit "baseless and legally defective."

On Jan. 10, 2023 judges from the D.C. Court of Appeals expressed reluctance to find that Trump acted within the scope of his employment in 2019 when he, in the course of denying a rape claim, allegedly defamed her by calling her a liar and saying she was "not my type," ABC News reported.

A federal judge indefinitely delayed the original defamation lawsuit Carroll brought against former President Trump, ABC News reported March 20.

Judge Lewis Kaplan adjourned the case without setting a new date while waiting for a decision from the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals, which governs the conduct of federal employees, on whether Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he spoke out against Carroll. If so, the Justice Department would substitute for Trump as the defendant and the case would be over, as the federal government cannot be sued for defamation.

On April 13, Reuters reported a Washington, D.C., appeals court refused to decide whether Donald Trump can be shielded from the first defamation lawsuit by Carroll.

It sent the case back to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan saying the 2nd Circuit or a federal district judge in Manhattan should assess Trump's role.

The US Justice Department then reversed a crucial opinion that sought to protect the former president from the case, all but assuring the matter will go to trial in January, Bloomberg reported July 11.

The new opinion by the Biden administration, outlined in a letter filed in federal court in Manhattan, determined that Trump no longer qualifies for government-employee immunity and can be sued for remarks he made about Carroll while he was president in 2019.

The move is a reversal of a previous department opinion that concluded Trump was protected by the Westfall Act, which bars civil suits against employees of the federal government over claims that relate to their official duties. The DOJ revisited the issue after an appeals court clarified that workers are only protected by the law if their actions were intended to help the US government.

According to the DOJ, Trump's argument that his comments about Carroll were intended only to serve the U.S. was undermined by a May jury finding in Carroll's second lawsuit that he had abused Carroll "long before he became President."

On May 22, Carroll asked a judge to update her still pending original defamation lawsuit filed in 2019 against President Trump to add a new claim after he trashed her as a "whack job" during his CNN town hall earlier in the month. The Associated Press reported Carroll is now seeking $10 million more.

A federal judge then dismissed a defamation counterclaim by Trump against Carroll in her pending lawsuit that accuses the former president of defaming her after she wrote that he had raped her, CNBC reported Aug. 7.

Trump's counterclaim in the Carroll suit focused on what he argued were her false statements, which he alleged badly harmed his reputation, a day after a jury verdict in May in her favor for $5 million for sexual abuse and defamation in a related civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Carroll during a CNN interview said that she thought, "Oh, yes, he did — oh, yes, he did" — after jurors in that case did not find that Trump had raped her.

Judge Kaplan, in dismissing the counterclaim, wrote that Carroll's statements repeating a claim that Trump had raped her were "substantially true" because the jury had found he digitally penetrated her, even if it did not find that he had penetrated her with his penis, as is required for a rape charge under New York law.

On Aug. 10, Trump appealed the dismissed lawsuit. On Sept. 6, Judge Kaplan rejected Trump's appeal and said the Jan. 15, 2024 trial for Carroll's original lawsuit against Trump will only deal with the question of how much the former president should pay her in monetary damages for defaming her.

A federal appeals court will quickly consider former President Trump's claim that presidential immunity protects him from being held liable for statements he made in 2019 when he denied that he sexually attacked a New York writer in the 1990s, the Associated Press reported Sept. 13.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued the order to expedite the appeal a day after Trump attorney Alina Habba told a three-judge panel of the court that the appeal raised "an important question that will affect the delicate balance between the judiciary and the executive branch for many years to come."

Day-by-day trial notes for lawsuit #2 and appeals:

On the first day of testimony, April 26, Carroll took the stand and told jurors that the future president raped her after she accompanied him into a department store fitting room in 1996, the Associated Press reported.

"I'm here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn't happen. He lied and shattered my reputation, and I'm here to try and get my life back," she testified.

Carroll, 79, has said she crossed paths with Trump at the revolving door to Bergdorf Goodman on an unspecified Thursday evening in spring 1996. (Or maybe 1995.She's not sure.) At the time, she was writing a long-running advice column in Elle magazine. Trump was a real estate magnate and social figure in New York.

She alleges Trump slammed her against a wall, yanked down her tights and raped her while she struggled against him. She has said she finally kneed him off her and fled. She described calling two friends soon after. She said one advised her to go to the police, while the other said not to. She said she didn't out of shame, and fear of retaliation.

On the second day of trial, Carroll was cross-examined by Trump's attorney, Joe Tacopino.

Tacopina questioned the validity of her bombshell claims while suggesting she only came forward with them decades later, in 2019, because of her disdain for Trump's politics and because she wanted to sell copies of her book.

Carroll admitted she has had a hard time identifying the date the alleged rape happened.

When he asked why she hadn't screamed if she was being raped, Carroll responded,

"Here's the thing: I was too much in a panic to scream. I'm telling you: He raped me whether I screamed or not."

On the third day of the trial, May 1, Carroll concluded her testimony. Trump attorney Tacopina highlighted what he suggested were discrepancies between her testimony and her statements in interviews, her book, depositions and social media posts.

Carroll denied making up her claims to drive publicity for her memoir, Reuters reported. Carroll said she wasn't seeking attention through appearances on TV and podcasts, while acknowledging they were an important driver of book sales.

Tacopina accused Carroll of being a "massive" fan of Trump's TV show, "The Apprentice."

Asked why she encouraged women who were victims of sexual assault to report such incidents to authorities in her Elle magazine advice column years before the alleged assault while she herself did not do so, she said she was shaped by her upbringing in a different era.

I was born in 1943," Carroll said.

"Women like us were taught to keep our chins up and never complain. I would rather do anything than to call the police."

On the fourth day of the trial, a friend of Carroll's testified that Carroll called her and described the alleged attack minutes after alleged assault took place, ABC News reports.

Lisa Birnbach, a writer, was the first person Carroll said she told about the alleged attack, "five to seven minutes" after the alleged assault occurred, Birnbach said.

"She told me that Donald Trump recognized her outside or right in the doorway of Bergdorf Goodman, he asked her to help him shop, and assaulted her upstairs in a dressing room," Birnbach testified.

"And E. Jean said to me many times, 'He pulled down my tights, he pulled down my tights.' Almost like she couldn't believe it had just happened to her."

Another witness for Carroll, Jessica Leeds, who was on a business trip in 1979 and says she was groped by Trump during a flight to New York, also testified as Carroll's attorneys attempted to show the jury a pattern of behavior, UPI News reported.

She admitted to Trump attorney Joe Tacopina that she couldn't produce any witnesses to the incident or provide much information about the flight, where it originated or the date of the incident.

On the fifth day, a clinical psychologist who examined Carroll said she endured the effects of trauma from an alleged attack by Trump. CBS News reported that Leslie Lebowitz, a trauma specialist hired by Carroll's attorneys to examine her, said she found during 20 hours of interviews that Carroll "manifests very notable avoidance symptoms, which have curtailed her romantic and intimate life and caused profound loss."

Carroll's attorneys played the infamous "Access Hollywood" audio tape of Trump telling Billy Bush, "I'm automatically attracted to beautiful women — I just start kissing them, it's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything," he said, including "grab 'em by the p----," referring to women's genitals. The tape surfaced during the 2016 campaign and was made just before Trump filmed a segment on the program "Access Hollywood." Trump told Bush: "When you're a star, they let you do it." Trump doubled-down on those lines during his October, 2022 deposition on Carroll's rape and defamation allegations.

"Historically, that's true, with stars," Trump testified on videotape as reported by Law & Crime. "Well what's what if you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true not always but largely true, unfortunately or fortunately."

Asked if he considered himself a star, Trump responded, "I think you can say that, yeah."

On the videotape, Trump also denied Carroll's claims, calling them the most "ridiculous, disgusting story" and "made up ." During the videotaped, Trump, who said Carroll wasn't "his type," confused Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples, his second wife.

On the final day of testimony, the Carroll legal team told the court they will be asking the jury to award their client $2.7 million in reputational damages caused by the former president, Law & Crime reported. This does not include possible damages to be sought as a result of the alleged rape or damages from lost wages.

Trump never attended the trial, even though while in Ireland he told reporters he need to cut his European trip short to respond in court to Carroll's allegations.

In her closing argument, Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said, "In a real sense, Donald Trump is a witness against himself." Referring to the Access Hollywood tape, she said, "He's telling you in his very own works how he treats women."

"In this country, even the most powerful person can be held accountable in court," said attorney Kaplan. "No one, not even a former president, is above the law."

Trump attorney Joe Tacopina said in his closing argument he knows Trump is a divisive figure, but that shouldn't matter to jurors when reaching a verdict.

"People have very strong feelings about Donald Trump. That's obvious," Tacopina said. "There's a time and a secret place to do that: it's called a ballot box during an election."

Tacopina said he knows Trump is a divisive figure, but that shouldn't matter to jurors when reaching a verdict. Tacopina accused Carroll of fabricating her rape allegations to sell her book and make money.

On May 9, the Manhattan jury, after three hours of deliberations, reached a verdict awarding almost $5 million in damages to Carroll. Trump will have to pay $3 million in the defamation claim and $2 million for the battery claim.

Trump then asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to overturn the verdict in the civil trial. Separately, he asked District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan to order a retrial solely on the questions of monetary damages. Judge Kaplan rejected his appeal on July 19.

Judge Kaplan also rejected Trump's claim that he didn't rape Carroll since the jury "only" found him guilty of sexual battery: "The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was 'raped' within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump 'raped' her as many people commonly understand the word 'rape.'"

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Trump family accused of pushing pyramid scheme, trial set for Jan. 29, 2024

Former President Trump, the Trump Organization, and three of his adult children, Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric, all suffered a legal setback in a federal appeals court on July 28, 2021 Law & Crime and Politico reported.

From Law & Crime: "For years the Trump family and its namesake entity have fought to keep a pyramid scheme lawsuit from being litigated in public. The Trump family's weapon of choice to keep those details under wraps was private and compelled arbitration clauses."

But in a 43-page opinion issued July 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied the Trump family's request to settle the numerous complaints against them through arbitration.

"The truth or falsity of the plaintiffs' allegations is not before us," Circuit Judge Robert D. Sack wrote. "We neither express nor imply any views with respect to them. The only question before us is whether this case should be resolved before the district court or an arbitrator."

Asserting myriad claims including "racketeering" and conspiracy and fraud, several of the class action plaintiffs originally sued the Trumps in October 2018 alleging the defendants - by way of "videos, print and online media" - promoted and endorsed a multi-level marketing, or pyramid, scheme known as ACN Opportunity, LLC.

Trump endorsed the company in speeches and on his T.V. show, "The Celebrity Apprentice."

Those endorsements came, the anonymous plaintiffs allege, even though the Trumps failed to conduct due diligence about the likelihood of economic losses and the slim probability of commercial success from such schemes. Each of the plaintiffs produced evidence to show the vast majority of people who were convinced to become "Independent Business Owners" for ACN went on to suffer losses or earned minimal profits.

Instead, the plaintiffs claim the Trump family from 2005 to 2015 simply parroted ACN's allegedly untrue claims because they were being paid millions of dollars, payments that were not publicly disclosed at the time their endorsements were made. (The New York Times reported the multi-level marketing company paid former President Trump $8.8 million over 10 years.) The lawsuits also claim statements by the Trumps that they had conducted extensive due diligence and research concerning the business opportunity and had inside information and personal experience with ACN were untrue.

At first, the Trumps litigated the lawsuits in the court system and successfully batted away a few of the causes of action. After winning those victories, however, and failing to secure a motion to dismiss, the Trumps moved to have the remaining claims settled by secretive arbitration.

But in April, 2021 a district court in New York City declined to allow the cases to be settled in arbitration. In May a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York refused to stay the decision pending appeal.

On Dec. 17, Bloomberg reported that unaired footage from Donald Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice" TV show is being reviewed by a team of lawyers in Los Angeles as part of the suit. A federal judge in New York City ordered the movie studio to make the footage available at a secure location, potentially ending a long-running battle that's still draped in secrecy. Lawyers for plaintiffs know what they're looking for: anything that shows Trump and his children knew they were duping would-be investors by leading them to ACN.

Donald Trump, Eric Trump and aide Hope Hicks were deposed in October, 2022. Plaintiff's attorney Robert Kaplan said in an email to Law & Crime on Nov. 4, "We look forward to moving forward expeditiously with expert discovery and class certification so that we can proceed to trial on the merits as soon as possible."

U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield has set a trial date in the case for Jan. 29, 2024.

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Federal grand jury indicts Donald Trump for Jan. 6 coup attempt, trial set for March 4, 2024

The Latest:  Taegan Goddard, the publisher of Political Wire, believes Donald Trump's attack of Gen. Mark Milley on Truth Social – Trump hinted at Milley being guilty of treason – is a sign that Milley may be a witness in Special Counsel Jack Smith's Jan. 6 case against the former president.

"Donald Trump suggested on Truth Social (Sept. 22) that Gen. Mark Milley — the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — should be executed for treason. It's an extraordinary attack on a well-regarded public servant.

"But it also raises the question of whether Milley is one of Special Counsel Jack Smith's witnesses for Trump's trial over interfering with the 2020 presidential election.

"That's because Milley may be able to provide proof that Trump knew he had lost the election.

"Politico made this report after the January 6 Committee voted to subpoena Trump:

     Among other revelations, the committee said Thursday that Trump sent military leaders into a panic by secretly ordering all U.S. troops withdrawn from Afghanistan and Somalia days after losing reelection. The select panel showed testimony from Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, describing Trump's withdrawal move as "potentially dangerous" but said Trump suggested leaving the problem to "the next guy." While the order was never implemented, Trump's intent was to complete the withdrawal before Inauguration Day — and panel member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) argued that it was evidence that he knew "his term would shortly end."

"If Trump knew he lost the election, then his actions on January 6 were obvious attempts to stay in office illegally.

"If Milley is a witness, Trump's comments can easily be portrayed as an attempt to intimidate him — something he swore not to do as part of his release conditions."

And in related news, prosecutors are probing former President Donald Trump's political operation after it paid over $44 million to lawyers and law firms that have represented potential witnesses and codefendants in his ongoing legal cases since 2020 — accounting for about half of the operation's legal expenses during that time, a new OpenSecrets analysis found.

OpenSecrets reported Sept. 22, "The political network's payments to lawyers and law firms that represent witnesses and defendants in the former president's ongoing legal cases have raised concerns about Trump pressuring witnesses citing the former president's history of allegedly trying to influence witnesses. From Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe and Trump's first impeachment to the mounting number of ongoing legal cases, Trump also has provided lawyers to allies caught up in his own legal cases."

In total, OpenSecrets reports, Trump's political network reported steering about $130 million in donor funds to pay lawyers and cover legal costs since he first began running for office. The network paid over $50 million of that since the start of 2022.

Background: On March, 2022 the Justice Department expanded its criminal investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to include examining the preparations and planning for the rally that preceded the riot, the Washington Post reported.

A special federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. issued subpoena requests to some "VIP" officials in former President Trump's orbit who assisted in planning, funding and executing the Jan. 6 rally.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department will "not shy away" from Jan. 6 investigations that may be seen as inherently "controversial or sensitive or political."

"To do that would undermine an element of the rule of law that we treat like cases alike without regard to the subject matter."

CNN reported Sept. 13 that Justice Department criminal prosecutors are now examining nearly every aspect of former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election -- including the fraudulent electors plot, efforts to push baseless election fraud claims and how money flowed to support these various efforts.

On Nov. 18, Fox News reported Attorney General Garland appointed former Justice Department official Jack Smith as special counsel. Smith will oversee the investigation into Trump's retention of classified documents after leaving the White House and whether the former president obstructed the federal government's investigation into the matter as well as whether Trump or other officials and entities interfered with the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election, including the certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, 2021.

For a second time, Trump's two top White House lawyers testified for several hours on Dec. 2 before the federal grand jury investigating the events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.  Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy Pat Philbin were spotted at D.C. District Court.

Trump's daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner have been subpoenaed by the special counsel, the New York Times reported Feb. 22, 2023.

The Hill reported Smith has also subpoenaed both former Vice President Mike Pence and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, two figures with strong visibility into Trump's actions leading up to and on the day of the deadly riot.

In March, Trump lawyers were in federal court trying to prevent the former vice president and former chief of staff from testifying. Trump's team contends that Smith's effort to seek details of Pence's conversations with Trump would violate executive privilege. The court quickly rejected Trump's argument and ordered both Pence and Meadows to testify.

According to The Hill, aide Stephen Miller, former Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and former national security adviser Robert O'Brien were also all directed to testify.

Trump, on March 29, appealed in the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision to force his former White House aides to testify.

Trump's legal team then lost that bid for emergency help from the federal appeals court in Washington, DC, CNN reported April 4.

And then former President Trump's legal team appealed a sealed order requiring limited testimony from former Vice President Pence after a judge determined he must answer questions from the Justice Department about some aspects of Trump's attempts to stay in power, The Hill reported April 10.

According to the Washington Post on April 12, "Federal prosecutors probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have in recent weeks sought a wide range of documents related to fundraising after the 2020 election, seeking to determine if President Trump or his advisers scammed donors by using false claims about voter fraud to raise money." The Washington Post also reported "at least two grand juries in Washington are meeting every week about Trump and his advisers on multiple fronts."

(The New York Times reported April 29 that special counsel Jack Smith's prosecutors "are trying to determine whether Mr. Trump and his aides violated federal wire fraud statutes as they raised as much as $250 million through a political action committee by saying they needed the money to fight to reverse election fraud even though they had been told repeatedly that there was no evidence to back up those fraud claims.")

NBC News reported that Trump's sealed appeal was filed in the circuit court on April 10, days after an adviser said Pence would not appeal an order last month by Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of U.S. District Court in Washington, requiring Pence to testify in Smith's investigation of Trump.

The federal appeals court denied Trump's motion to block the testimony of several of his senior aides. The decision came after U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled in March that Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and other aides must testify despite Trump's invocation of executive privilege.

Former Vice President Mike Pence testified before a federal grand jury, according to a person familiar with the matter, the Associated Press reported April 27. Special Counsel Smith sat in on the deposition.

Former President Trump was indicted on Aug. 1 by a federal grand jury regarding Special Counsel Jack Smith's probe into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. According to Fox News, "Trump was indicted on four federal charges out of the probe, including conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights."

The indictment focuses on four areas—pressuring state election officials to change the results; organizing fake slates of electors; using the Department of Justice to pressure state officials to change their electoral votes; and attempting to get Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the results. (Trump also faces criminal charges related to the Electoral College scheme in the indictments issued at "Georgia county grand jury indicts Trump and allies for effort to overturn state election, trials begin Oct. 23" above.)

There are also six non-indicted co-conspirators who have not yet been identified — four attorneys, a Justice Department official and a political consultant. Media sources have, however, identified Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro as five of Trump's co-conspirators. (See "68 Days That Will Live in Infamy" immediately above for details on the efforts and actions of all five to overturn the election.)

The judge overseeing former President Trump's election interference case in federal court set a trial date for March 4, 2024. Lawyers for the former president had requested an April 2026 start date.

And then Trump made his first formal push to have the judge disqualified. ABC News reported Sept. 11 the recusal motion filed by Trump's attorneys cited comments Judge Chutkan made in cases she oversaw for individuals charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol which they argue show she "suggested that President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned."

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Manhattan grand jury indicts Trump on criminal charges, trial set for March 25, 2024 plus Legal Analysis

The Latest:  Judge Juan Merchan, in a letter to Trump defense attorney Todd Blanche, said he would schedule a hearing in February to consider whether it makes sense to move the trial date, due to "the many recent developments involving Mr. Trump."

Background: On Nov. 4, 2021 the Manhattan district attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. convened a long-term grand jury to hear evidence about the Trump Organization's financial practices and potentially to vote on criminal charges, the Washington Post reported.

According to the Post, Trump's company sometimes valued its properties up to 30 times more than their value depending on who the numbers were provided to. For example, in 2013, the Trump Organization told county tax officials that its California golf club in Rancho Palos Verdes was worth $900,000. But in 2014, as the company was seeking a massive tax deduction through a conservation easement, it said the same property was worth at least $25 million.

According to the New York Times, in the early weeks of the tenure of Vance's replacement, Alvin Bragg, the new D.A. developed concerns about the strength of that case and decided to abandon the grand jury presentation.

In February, 2022 the two prosecutors heading the case, Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, resigned - which a source at the time said was an indication of frustration over the direction of the case.

Pomerantz said in his resignation letter that Trump was "guilty of numerous felony violations" and that it was "a grave failure of justice" not to hold him accountable, the New York Times reported March 23. Pomerantz asserted that he had a meritorious case against Trump on felony tax offenses that Bragg refused to charge. "His financial statements were false, and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people," Pomerantz wrote in his resignation letter.

In his book published after resigning, Pomerantz described Trump "as a malignant narcissist, and perhaps even a megalomaniac who posed a real danger to the country."

The New York Times reported April 29, "When Mr. Bragg took office this year, he and several of his aides raised concerns about the strength of the case, questioning whether they could prove that Mr. Trump intended to break the law. Other prosecutors in the office had raised similar concerns, people with knowledge of the matter said. In the final months of Mr. Vance's tenure, three assistant district attorneys stopped working on the investigation, concerned about how rapidly it was proceeding and what they felt were gaps in the evidence against the former president."

(Blog editor's note: On March 30, 2023, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, the former chief assistant Manhattan District Attorney, said on MSNBC that the investigation is still active. Former special assistant district attorney in Manhattan, Catherine Christian, told MSNBC on April 5 the same thing.)

And then on Nov. 21, the New York Times reported, "The Manhattan district attorney's office has moved to jump-start its criminal investigation into Donald Trump, seeking to breathe new life into an inquiry that once seemed to have reached a dead end."

"The district attorney's office first examined the payment to the actress, Stormy Daniels, years ago before changing direction to scrutinize Mr. Trump's broader business practices. But Mr. Bragg and some of his deputies have recently indicated to associates, supporters and at least one lawyer involved in the matter that they are newly optimistic about building a case against Mr. Trump, the people said."

(ABC News reported that Trump, after announcing his candidacy for president in 2015, recruited his attorney, Michael Cohen, and tabloid executive David Pecker to work together to "suppress negative stories" by having Pecker, on behalf of the National Enquirer, procure exclusive rights to stories that might cast a negative light on Trump and then not publish them. Trump and Cohen would then reimburse Pecker's company, AMI. The group eventually paid-off two women and one man: Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal and a doorman at Trump Tower who told a tall tale about Trump have an out-of-wedlock son.)

The New York Times reported Cohen, the former president's former "fixer," is talking again to the Manhattan D.A. "The questioning of the lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, offered the clearest sign yet that the district attorney's office was ramping up its investigation into Mr. Trump's role in the $130,000 hush money deal. Mr. Cohen has said publicly that Mr. Trump directed him, in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign, to buy the silence of Stephanie Clifford, the actress known as Stormy Daniels." (The payment to Daniels came three days after release of the infamous "Hollywood Access" tape in which Trump is heard bragging about the fact that, being a "star," he could sexually assault women with impunity. The payment to Daniels was allegedly seen as a necessity to protect Trump's chances of winning the 2016 election.)

Cohen went to prison in 2018 for, among other things, campaign finance violations. Cohen's campaign finance problems came from the check he got from Donald Trump to pay off Stormy Daniels. Trump (identified as "Individual-1" by the Justice Department in Cohen-related court filings) emerged legally unscathed and has denied that he directed Cohen to pay off Daniels, saying the payments did not come from his campaign and that he did not have an affair with Daniels while married to the now-former first lady, Melania.

NPR reported that Cohen told authorities he paid Daniels the money and arranged to be reimbursed $420,000 by Trump's company to cover his taxes. The company recorded the payments to Cohen as legal fees, which could constitute a crime in New York.

On Jan. 30, 2023 the Manhattan district attorney's office began presenting evidence to a grand jury about Trump's role in paying hush money to porn star Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign, laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against the former president in the coming months, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

One of the witnesses, David Pecker, was seen with his lawyer entering the building in Lower Manhattan where the grand jury is sitting. Pecker is the former publisher of The National Enquirer, the tabloid that helped broker the deal with Daniels.

Daniels claims to have slept with Trump in 2006. In her memoir, Daniels described in graphic detail Trump's anatomy and the circumstances of their tryst. On Jan. 30, he again denied ever having an affair with Daniels.

One of Trump's attorney, Joe Tacopina, appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" March 13 and said Trump has "no plans on participating" in the Manhattan grand jury. The lawyer, when asked if Trump directed Cohen to pay Daniels, replied, "Let's assume he did."

And then on March 30 Trump became the first former American president to be indicted on felony criminal charges after the Manhattan district attorney's office filed charges against him in connection with a $130,000 hush money payment weeks before the 2016 presidential campaign made to the porn star, ABC News and the New York Times reported.

Cohen claims he made the payment at Trump's direction.

Prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney's office say that Trump illegally falsified business records when his reimbursement of the funds to Cohen was logged in the Trump Organization's books as a "monthly retainer" for Cohen's legal services, ABC News reported.

Trump was arraigned, and the charges unsealed on April 4 in Manhattan Criminal Court. Trump pled "not guilty" to 34 felony charges. Bragg said that Trump was accused of "falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election."

Judge Juan Merchan has set March 25, 2024 as the trial date. The judge said no one associated with the case, including Trump, should schedule anything to interfere. "He cannot agree to any speaking engagements, appearances," Merchan said.

Legal Analysis

Charlie Savage at the New York Times commented on the charges the Manhattan District Attorney filed against former President Trump. Here is just a portion of his essay.

    The unsealed indictment against former President Donald Trump laid out an unexpected accusation that bolstered what many legal experts have described as an otherwise risky and novel case: Prosecutors claim he falsified business records in part for a plan to deceive state tax authorities.

    Accusing Trump of bookkeeping fraud to conceal campaign finance violations, many believed, could raise significant legal challenges. That accusation turned out to be a major part of Bragg's theory — but not all of it.

    "Pundits have been speculating that Trump would be charged with lying about the hush-money payments to illegally affect an election, and that theory rests on controversial legal issues and could be hard to prove," said Rebecca Roiphe, a New York Law School professor and former state prosecutor.

    "It turns out the indictment also includes a claim that Trump falsified records to commit a state tax crime," she continued. "That's a much simpler charge that avoids the potential pitfalls."

    But bookkeeping fraud is normally a misdemeanor. For it to rise to a felony, prosecutors must show that a defendant intended to commit, aid or conceal a second crime — raising the question of what other crime Bragg would contend is involved.

    Bragg suggested that prosecutors are putting forward multiple theories for the second crime, potentially giving judges and jurors alternative routes to finding that bookkeeping fraud was a felony.

    As was widely predicted, he is pointing toward alleged violations of both federal and state elections laws. By doing so, he is in part plunging forward with a premise that has given pause to even some of Trump's toughest critics.

    As a matter of legal process, to cite federal law raises the untested question of whether a state prosecutor can invoke a federal crime even though he lacks jurisdiction to charge that crime himself. Still, Article 175 (in New York State law) does not say that the second intended crime must be a state-law offense.

    At a news conference, Bragg pointed to both state and federal election law. He cited a New York state election law that makes it a misdemeanor to conspire to promote a candidacy by unlawful means, but did not explain why that law would apply to a presidential election. He also described a federal cap on campaign contributions without indicating why he had the authority to invoke a crime he could not himself charge.

    Bragg also introduced yet another theory, accusing Trump of falsifying business records as a way to back up planned false claims to tax authorities.

    "The participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme," Bragg wrote in the statement of facts that accompanied the indictment.

    At one point, he seemed to suggest that a planned false statement to New York tax authorities was just an example of the ways by which Trump and Cohen purportedly violated the state law against conspiring to promote a candidate through unlawful means.

     At another point Bragg seemed to put forward an alleged plan to lie to tax authorities — an intention to say Cohen had earned income for "legal services performed in 2017" to launder what was in reality a repayment — as a stand-alone offense.

    In the courtroom, prosecutor Christopher Conroy accused Trump of causing the Trump Organization to create a series of false business records, adding that he "even mischaracterized for tax purposes the true nature of the payment."

     "The reference to false tax filings may save the case from legal challenges that may arise if the felony charges are predicated only on federal and state election laws," said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University.

     Indeed, a range of election law specialists expressed fresh doubt about whether Bragg could successfully use campaign finance laws alone to elevate the bookkeeping fraud charges to felonies. Among those skeptics were Richard L. Hasen, a UCLA legal scholar, and Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a longtime election lawyer for the Republican Party and a critic of Trump.

Postscript: "The bottom line is that it's murky," Hasen, an expert in election law, told Fortune. "And the district attorney did not offer a detailed legal analysis as to how they can do this, how they can get around these potential hurdles. And it could potentially tie up the case for a long time."

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Trump indicted for refusing to return top-secret government documents; judge sets May 20, 2024 trial date; plus, timeline of Mar-a-Lago documents case

The Latest: National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy, a legal analyst often seen on Fox News, on Sept. 25 explained why Trump's argument in his Sept. 14 interview with Megyn Kalley that he is protected from Special Counsel Jack Smith's indictment in the Mar-a-Lago documents case because of the Presidential Records Act is so weak. 

    She's invariably armed with a line of questions that gets to the point. She did that with Trump, particularly on his murky theory that the Presidential Records Act (PRA) is a complete defense for him against special counsel Jack Smith's charges that he unlawfully retained national-security information.

    Trump filibustered about how he's covered by the PRA, how it puts him in charge of the documents, how it's a civil-law provision (not criminal) with no enforcement mechanism, and how he could therefore do anything he wanted with the documents.

    Megyn pierced through the logorrhea by bracing him with the full implication of his argument.

Kelly: Do you believe that every CIA document that came to you as president was automatically yours to keep, no matter what?

Trump: I'm not gonna answer that question —

Kelly: So that's the dispute.

Trump: No, no — because I think it's clear in the document. The Presidential Records Act was a very complex thing. . . .

    Trump went on to not answer the question, which is telling. But the answer is clear nonetheless: Yes, Trump is claiming that every classified intelligence-agency report shown to him by national-security officials became not just a presidential record but his personal property, to do with as he pleased — including taking them out of the White House or other government safekeeping and shipping them down to Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach resort club where he keeps his main residence.

    The former president's reluctance to say this out loud is understandable. It sounds crazy.

    Is Trump really covered by the PRA in the sense of its being a complete defense to the unlawful retention charges?

    No. To be more precise (because Trump's rambling assertions confuse this point), he, as a former president, is certainly covered by the PRA, but the terms of the PRA do not make agency records or presidential records a president's personal property. Still, the fact that the former president's argument is a loser doesn't mean there is nothing to it. So let's try to wrap our brains around it.

    Trump defenders are saying that if, say, the Agriculture Department handed then-president Trump a dry, non-classified report outlining mundane crop-production statistics, he could not keep that because it's an agency record, not a presidential record. By contrast, they insist that if the Defense Intelligence Agency produced a top-secret report outlining American security vulnerabilities that China's armed forces could exploit to defeat us in a war, that would not be an agency record; it would be a presidential record that Trump, in his sole, unreviewable discretion, could deem his personal property and lawfully use as wallpaper in a chandeliered Mar-a-Lago lavatory.

    Does that seem right to you?

    Of course it's not right, and for several reasons. Mainly it's not right because Trump ignores that the driving purpose of the PRA is to preserve presidential records as government property, to be kept in government safekeeping. The former president, to the contrary, claims that if agency intelligence reports technically qualify as presidential records, they perforce transmogrify into a president's personal records.

    In Part Two of this two-column series, we'll get to why Trump's PRA theorizing is untenable.

Timeline of Mar-a-Lago documents case, alleged crimes and the federal investigation

Last Full Day in Office, Jan. 19, 2021: Reports surface in June, 2023 that Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, removed more than a thousand pages of classified documents from the White House late at night on orders from the president.

Zero Days After Leaving Office: Donald Trump becomes a private citizen the afternoon of Jan. 20, 2021.

16 Days After Leaving Office: President Biden announces that, unlike other living former presidents, Donald Trump will not be receiving classified intelligence briefings due to "erratic behavior," adding, "What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?"

106 Days After Leaving Office: On May 6 the chief counsel for the National Archives and Records Administration, Gary Stern, emails Trump's legal team saying some high-profile presidential documents appear to be missing. "We know things are very chaotic, as they always are in the course of a one-term transition. But it is absolutely necessary that we obtain and account for all presidential records."

NARA then goes back-and-forth "throughout 2021" with Trump representatives seeking the return of the records.

117 Days After Leaving Office (approx): According to the U.S. government indictment of Trump on June 8, 2023, Trump moves some of the documents he took with him after leaving the White House to his private golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. The Bedminster Club is not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display or discussion of classified documents.

176 Days After Leaving Office (approx): CNN and The Guardian report on May 31, 2023 that federal prosecutors obtained an audio recording from a July, 2021 meeting at Trump's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersy in which the former president acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran and admits he cannot discuss the document because he no longer possesses the sweeping presidential power to declassify now that he's out of office, but suggests that he should have done so when he was still in the White House.

The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House. On the recording, Trump's comments suggest he would like to share the information but he's aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records. The attendees were journalists and staff who did not have security clearances that would allow them access to classified information nor was the location - a golf course - an authorized location to share top-secret government documents.

Note: In an interview with Fox News in June, 2023, Trump denied that the material in his possession at Bedminster was a classified document. "I didn't have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles." ABC News, however,reported in August, 2023 that an early draft of the prologue to Mark Meadows' book, "The Chief's Chief," included a description of Trump having a classified war plan "on the couch" at his office in Bedminster, New Jersey, at a meeting attended by Meadows' ghostwriter and publicist. The reference to that document being in Trump's possession was removed before the book was published. Multiple sources tell ABC News Meadows acknowledged to Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigators that he asked that the paragraph be changed because it would be "problematic" had Trump had such a document in his possession.Trump, however, was subsequently indicted by Smith on charges of possessing the top-secret classified document.

238 Days After Leaving Office: National Archives lawyer Stern is told by former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin that he was told by former Trump chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that none of the material at Mar-a-Lago is sensitive or classified and that Trump only had 12 boxes of "news clippings."

In an interview with New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, Trump told Haberman he left White House with "nothing of great urgency, no," before mentioning letters that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had sent him, which, she later reported, he had showed off to so many Oval Office visitors that advisers were concerned he was being careless with sensitive material. "You were able to take those with you?" Haberman asked. Trump replied, "No, I think that's in the archives, but ... Most of it is in the archives, but the Kim Jong-un letters ... We have incredible things." (Earlier, in January, 2020, Trump indicated during a recorded interview with Bob Woodward that he knew the letters he wrote to Kim Jong Un were top secret. In the recording, Trump can be heard telling Woodward to refrain from publicizing that it was Trump himself who had shown the letters to him. "Nobody else has them, but I want you to treat them with respect. Don't say I gave them to you. Okay?")

303 Days After Leaving Office:In late 2021, Trump reportedly goes through boxes of documents he had taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. Some of those boxes - which included 197 documents marked classified - are finally transferred to the National Archives in January, 2022.

At the same time, Trump is told by one of his former White House attorneys, Eric Herschmann, that he could face legal liability if he did not return all government materials.

340 Days After Leaving Office: Officials at the National Archives in January, 2022 receive 15 boxes of materials from the former president's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. Archives officials suspect Trump has possibly violated laws concerning the handling of government documents - including those that might be considered classified.

(The media reported in August, 2022 that among the 15 boxes of materials returned from Mar-a-Lago in January were 700 pages of highly-classified materials, some of it "extraordinarily sensitive information," including 184 classified documents, 92 documents marked "secret" and 25 marked "top secret.")

Trump directs a lawyer working for him to tell the archives that Trump returned all the documents he had taken from the White House. The lawyer, Alex Cannon, declined to convey Trump's message to the archives because he was not sure if it was true.

385 Days After Leaving Office: The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) asks the Justice Department to examine Trump's handling of White House records, the Washington Post reported Feb. 9.

In a statement the same day, Trump said he had engaged in "collaborative and respectful" discussions with the Archives and had arranged for the "transport of boxes that contained Presidential Records in compliance with the Presidential Records Act."

"The papers were given easily and without conflict and on a very friendly basis, which is different from the accounts being drawn up by the Fake News Media," he says in a statement. "In fact, it was viewed as routine and 'no big deal.' In actuality, I have been told I was under no obligation to give this material based on various legal rulings that have been made over the years."

442 Days After Leaving Office: The Washington Post reported April 7 that the Justice Department has begun taking steps to investigate former President Trump's removal of presidential records to Mar-a-Lago.

464 Days After Leaving Office: On April 29, the Justice Department sends a letter to Trump's lawyers as part of its effort to access the 15 boxes that Trump delivered in January, notifying them that more than 100 classified documents, totaling more than 700 pages, were found in the boxes. The letter says the FBI and US intelligence agencies need "immediate access" to these materials because of "important national security interests." Trump lawyers ask NARA to delay its plans to give the FBI access to these materials. Trump's lawyers say they want time to examine the materials to see if anything is privileged, and that they are making a "protective assertion of executive privilege" over all the documents.

474 Days After Leaving Office: On May 10, Debra Steidel Wall, the acting Archivist of the United States, who runs NARA, informs Trump's lawyers that she is rejecting their claims of "protective" executive privilege over all the materials taken from Mar-a-Lago, and will turn over the materials to the FBI and US intelligence agencies. Wall says she reached this decision after consulting with top lawyers from the Justice Department and the White House Counsel's office. As to Trump's claim of executive privilege, Wall wrote that there is "no precedent for an assertion of executive privilege by a former President against an incumbent President to prevent the latter from obtaining NARA Presidential records."

475 Days After Leaving Office: On May 11, the Justice Department subpoenas Trump, demanding classified documents that still remain at Mar-a-Lago be returned. (In October, 2022, it is reported by the Washington Post that, according to Trump employees cooperating with the FBI, Trump responded to the subpoena by ordering employees to move boxes of U.S. government documents from a storage room to his office at Mar-a-Lago. Security camera video confirms the account.)

477 Days After Leaving Office: Federal prosecutors begin a grand jury investigation into whether classified documents were mishandled and of criminal obstruction of justice. (Intelligencer reported Aug. 12 that at this same time Trump's attorneys arranged for a DOJ National Security Division prosecutor and three FBI agents to come to Mar-a-Lago on June 3 to pick up the items listed in the subpoena.)

482 Days After Leaving Office (approx): An unidentified female member of the Trump family texts Trump's personal aide, Walt Nauta (who would be indicted in June, 2023 for helping his boss move boxes of classified documents around the Mar-a-Lago property in an effort to allude the FBI and Trump's own attorneys) about boxes he had removed from the estate.

487 Days After Leaving Office: On May 23 Trump's then-lead attorney on the matter, Evan Corcoran, warned the former president in person, at Mar-a-Lago, that not only did Trump have to fully comply with the May 11 subpoena, but that the FBI might search the estate if he didn't, according to Corcoran's audio notes following the conversation.

Only minutes later, during a pool-side chat away from Trump, Corcoran got his own warning from another Trump attorney: If you push Trump to comply with the subpoena, "he's just going to go ballistic."

Trump asked Corcoran, "what happens if we just don't respond at all or don't play ball with them?" Corcoran told Trump. "Well, there's a prospect that they could go to a judge and get a search warrant, and that they could arrive here." Trump still insisted to them, "I don't want anybody looking through my boxes," and, "Wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here?"

498 Days After Leaving Office: Two of Donald Trump's employees - including Trump's valet, Walt Nauta - move boxes of papers into a storage area the day before Justice Department official Jay Bratt arrives at Mar-a-Lago, the Washington Post later reported. (It is later reported that Nauta moved approximately 64 boxes from the storage room between May 24 and Juen 1, 2022 but only returned 25 to 30 boxes to the same storage room on June 2.)

499 Days After Leaving Office: According to the Washington Post, FBI agents and Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section at the Justice Department, on June 3 meet with Trump's attorneys - former OAN host Christina Bobb and Evan Corcoran - at Mar-a-Lago to collect material in response to the May 22 grand jury subpoena demanding the return of all classified documents. However, "The former President's counsel explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room, giving no opportunity for the government to confirm that no documents with classification markings remained."

FBI agents were, instead, given "a single Redweld envelope, double-wrapped in tape, containing the documents." That envelope, according to the FBI, contained 38 unique documents with classification markings, including 16 documents marked secret and 17 marked top secret.

The New York Times reported that "around" the time of the June 3 meeting, the feds received a "written declaration from a Trump lawyer attesting that all the material marked classified in the boxes had been turned over." The declaration, which also stated that a "diligent search" had been undertaken, was drafted by Corcoran and signed by Bobb. (It was reported in October, 2022 that Corcoran conducted the search and instructed Bobb to sign the letter, which she did after insisting twice that he insert the phrase, "based upon the information that has been provided to me.")

The Wall Street Journal later reported that sometime after the June 3 meeting a mole in Trump's orbit told the FBI that Trump and his team are still withholding information. And that after the June 3 visit the Justice Department "developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government's investigation."

Trump is put on notice that he could not retain any classified documents after he was subpoenaed for their return. Hugo Lowell at The Guardian later reported the warning was conveyed to Trump by Evan Corcoran.

Fast-forward to June 8, 2023: The indictment of the former president alleges that at this time Trump had boxes of classified documents put on an airplane taking Trump and his family north for the summer. The boxes were moved by aide Walt Nauta and others on the same day Trump's attorneys were handing over to the federal government a certified letter claiming all the documents had been returned. The indictment also alleges Trump had Nauta move more classified documents within the Mar-a-Lago estate to evade detection by the FBI and Trump's own attorneys.

507 Days After Leaving Office: On June 8, the Justice Department sends Trump a letter stating the government documents he continues to hold at Mar-a-Lago are not stored in a secure location.

520 Days After Leaving Office: On June 24, the Justice Department hands a new subpoena to the Trump Organization, which owns Mar-a-Lago. The subpoena seeks surveillance video to help show who might have been coming and going from the storage area where (Trump's attorneys) indicated 50 to 55 boxes of records taken from the White House were being stored. The video footage shows various people entering and leaving the room, according to a person with direct knowledge of it.

562 Days After Leaving Office: FBI officials are able to establish probable cause that a crime has been committed and obtain a search warrant from a federal magistrate judge in West Palm Beach on Aug.5 to search Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate/hotel, according to the Miami Herald.

The New York Times reported the material still in Trump's possession is so sensitive that DOJ officials felt they had to take the "politically explosive step" of raiding the former president's home. The paper also reported the Justice Department reviewed surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago that showed that in one instance boxes were moved in and out of the storage room on the property.

565 Days After Leaving Office: And on Aug. 8, after the FBI had arrived at his Mar-a-Lago home with a search warrant, Trump, who is in New York, announces on Truth Social the FBI are inside his Mar-a-Lago home.

The Wall Street Journal reported FBI agents who search Trump's Mar-a-Lago home remove 26 boxes of materials, including four sets marked "top secret" and meant to be only available in special government facilities.

FBI agents recover one set of documents marked as 'Various classified/TS/SCI documents,' an abbreviation that refers to top-secret/sensitive compartmented information. In total, there are 102 pages recovered bearing classification markings.

The Washington Post reported that a document describing a foreign government's military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found at Trump's home/public resort. "Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them. Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special-access programs."

The documents included highly sensitive intelligence regarding Iran's missile program and China, the Washington Post reported. "If shared with others, the people said, such information could expose intelligence-gathering methods that the United States wants to keep hidden from the world."

The New York Times reported "Federal agents who executed the warrant did so to investigate potential crimes associated with violations of the Espionage Act, which outlaws the unauthorized retention of national security information that could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary; a federal law that makes it a crime to destroy or conceal a document to obstruct a government investigation; and another statute associated with unlawful removal of government materials."

583 Days After Leaving Office: On Aug. 26, the FBI affidavit - highly redacted - used to successfully convince a judge to approve the search warrant used in the Aug. 8 raid is made public. Fox News reported the affidavit stated the FBI believed it had "probable cause to believe" that, based on their investigation, they would find additional records containing National Defense Information if allowed to search Trump's home.

Fox News reported the affidavit also states, "The government is conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records." CNN reported the FBI told the judge a search of Trump's home would also likely find "evidence of obstruction."

The signed affidavit by a FBI official concludes, "Based on the foregoing facts and circumstances, I submit that probable cause exists to believe that evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation 18 U.S.C. §§ 793(e), 2071, or 1519 will be found at the PREMISES."

590 Days After Leaving Office: US District Judge Aileen Cannon on Sept. 2 releases a detailed inventory from the FBI search of former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort hotel/country club/home. The FBI recovered more than 11,000 government documents and photographs, including over 184 records with "Classified" markings. Of those documents, 67 were marked as "confidential," 92 were marked as "secret," and 25 documents were marked as "top secret." Agents found one document marked "secret" and one marked "confidential" in the desk drawer in Trump's office. (Note: On July 13, 2023, NPR reported the FBI "gathered about 340 classified documents from the Mar-a-Lago resort.")

603 Days After Leaving Office: Trump-appointed Judge Cannon on Sept. 15, at the request of Trump's attorneys, names federal senior Judge Raymond Dearie to serve as special master to review the materials seized in the FBI's search of former President Trump's Florida residence and resort. Cannon also rejects the Justice Department's request to revive its criminal investigation into classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago. Her ruling, in effect, which argued the former president should be given special consideration, halts the department's investigation of Trump's decision to take government documents with him to Florida after his term expired.

607 Days After Leaving Office: Trump's legal team acknowledged the possibility that the former president could be indicted, The Guardian reported. "Despite claiming days earlier that Trump couldn't imagine being charged, his lawyers made the stark admission in a court filing (Sept. 19)."

609 Days After Leaving Office: The New York Times reports the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Sept. 21 rejected Judge Cannon's decision and restored the Justice Department's access to documents with classified markings.

622 Days After Leaving Office: On Oct. 4, Trump filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court challenging part of a Sept. 21 ruling from the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

That ruling allowed the Justice Department to continue reviewing classified documents seized at Trump's Florida estate on Aug. 8 and blocked Trump-appointed Judge Cannon's ruling requiring the government to submit all the documents to an independent arbiter, or special master, for review.

Trump's lawyers said in their application that it was essential for the special master to have access to the classified records to "determine whether documents bearing classification markings are in fact classified, and regardless of classification, whether those records are personal records or presidential records." The Justice Department argued the documents, including highly classified top secret documents, belong to the U.S. government.

627 Days After Leaving Office: Trump, at a political rally in Arizona, admits he took U.S. government documents with him after leaving the White House. "I had a small number of boxes in storage at Mar-a-Lago...They should give immediately back everything they've taken from me because it's mine."

631 Days After Leaving Office: The Supreme Court rejects former President Trump's Oct. 4 appeal to delay the Justice Department's criminal investigation into his handling of classified documents. The high court left in place part of a Sept. 21 decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that barred the special master, federal Judge Raymond Dearie, from reviewing the classified documents. Judge Dearie will continue to review the non-classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago and the Justice Department will continue its criminal investigation into the handling of the classified documents.

679 Days After Leaving Office: Attorney General Merrick Garland names Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate the unlawful retention of national defense information at former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, Fox News reported Nov. 18. Smith, a former assistant U.S. attorney and chief to the DOJ's public integrity section, will oversee the investigation into Trump's retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, whether the former president obstructed the federal government's investigation into the matter and whether Trump or other officials and entities interfered with the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election, including the certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, 2021.

689 Days After Leaving Office: Trump, who initially claimed the FBI planted the top-secret documents found in his Mar-a-Lago estate/hotel in August, again admitted on Nov. 28 taking them after his term expired on Jan. 20, 2021. In a Truth Social posting, Trump asks, "When will you invade the other Presidents' homes in search of documents, which are voluminous, which they took with them, but not nearly so openly and transparently as I did?"

692 Days After Leaving Office: An 11th Circuit federal appeals panel, all of whom were appointed by either President Trump or President George W. Bush, overturned Judge Cannon's order creating a third-party special master to review documents seized at Mar-a-Lago. The Dec. 1 ruling clears the way for federal investigators to use the documents in the criminal investigation of former President Trump. The appeals court directly criticized Judge Cannon's special master order, stating: "We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. . . . To create a special exception here would defy our Nation's foundational principle that our law applies 'to all, without regard to numbers, wealth, or rank.'"

838 Days After Leaving Office:Asked at a May 10 CNN Town Hall why he took classified documents with him after leaving the White House, Trump claimed he "had every right to under the Presidential Records Act."

(In reality, the Presidential Records Act provides that as soon as a president leaves office, the National Archives becomes the legal custodian of the president's records, which belong to the public.)

Trump also repeated the claim that by simply removing classified documents from the White House he had declassified them. "And, by the way, they become automatically declassified when I took them."

When asked if he showed any of the classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago property to anyone, Trump replied, "Not really. I would have the right to. By the way, they were declassified after..." When the host asked, "What do you mean not really?" Trump replied, "Not that I can think of."

(In late June, 2023, an audio tape is released in which Trump is heard showing top-secret documents to visitors to his New Jersey golf course. The tape ends with Trump commenting: "See as President I could have declassified it. Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret…It's so cool…Hey, bring some, uh, bring some Cokes in please.")

867 Days After Leaving Office:Former President Trump and his aide, Walt Nauta, are indicted on June 8, 2023 on 37 criminal charges. Trump becomes the first U.S. president or ex-president to face federal criminal charges.

NBC News reported: "The indictment accuses Trump of breaking seven laws, including 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information and single counts of false statements and representations, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document, concealing a document in a federal investigation and a scheme to conceal."

The 49-page indictment, issued by a federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Florida reads, in part: "The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods."

According to Fox News, the special counsel claims that Trump showed classified documents to persons not cleared to review top-secret government documents in twice in 2021--once in July at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey and once in August or September.

The indictment says Trump also suggested his attorney "hide or destroy documents called for by the grand jury subpoena" and directed his aide—co-defendant Walt Nauta—to "move boxes of documents called for by the grand jury subpoena, while claiming that he was cooperating fully." (The indictment only relates to documents Trump refused to return, not any of the many he voluntarily returned after leaving the White House.)

The indictment includes photos of boxes of classified documents stored in bathrooms, ballrooms and bedrooms at a facility - Mar-a-Lago - visited by tens of thousands during the year-and-a-half Trump kept them in his possession.

872 Days After Leaving Office: Former President Trump is arrested, fingerprinted, arraigned and pleas not guilty to all charges in a Miami federal criminal court on June 13, 2023.

878 Days After Leaving Office: "Why not just hand them over then?" Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked Trump on June 19.

"Because I had boxes. I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out," Trump responded. "I don't want to hand that over to [the National Archives] yet. And I was very busy, as you've sort of seen."

Baier noted that the Justice Department's indictment laid out how Trump allegedly told an aide to move the boxes containing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate while also telling his lawyers to indicate he was cooperating.

"Before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things, golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes, there were many things."

910 Days After Leaving Office: Judge Cannon - yes, the same Judge Cannon that ruled in favor of Trump back at "603 Days After Leaving Office" - will preside over Trump's criminal trial in the case. This time she rejects Trump's effort to delay the trial until after the election and sets a two-week trial date of May 20, 2024 for Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta.

916 Days After Leaving Office: Jack Smith brought additional charges against Trump - he now faces 40 felony counts in the case - alleging the former president asked a staffer to delete footage from Mar-a-Lago security cameras. CNN reported new charges were also filed against Trump's aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago maintenance manager Carlos De Oliveira, who allegedly helped Nauta move boxes of classified documents around Mar-a-Lago after the Justice Department first subpoenaed Trump for classified documents last May. Smith also accuses Trump of acting with de Oliveira and Nauta to try to delete the footage from the property's security cameras. (Trump and Nauta both pleaded not guilty on Aug. 10. Trump on "Meet the Press" Sept. 17 said he would testify in court that he did not ask a staffer to delete footage from a security camera.)

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Lawsuits

Will the Supreme Court - or state courts - decide Trump's 2024 ballot fate?

The Latest:  A liberal group has filed a lawsuit in Michigan contending that former president Donald Trump is disqualified from regaining his old job based on a rarely used, post-Civil War provision in the U.S. Constitution, the Associated Press reported Sept. 29.

Free Speech For People argued that Trump's attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss and encouragement of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol violated section three of the 14th Amendment, which holds that anyone who swore an oath to uphold the constitution and then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against it is barred from holding office.

The case is the second the organization has filed to block the GOP presidential frontrunner's bid, following one in Minnesota.

And in related news, a Texas Republican candidate for president's effort to keep former Republican president Donald Trump off the West Virginia ballot in 2024 was dealt a short-term setback Sept. 28, Steven Allen Adams of The Intelligencer reported.

In proposed findings and recommendations filed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Omar J. Aboulhosn recommended the denial of an emergency application for a restraining order and a request for an expedited preliminary injunction and preliminary bench trial filed last week by John Anthony Castro, a write-in candidate for the Republican nomination for President.

Castro is seeking a federal court order prohibiting Trump from being placed on West Virginia's 2024 Republican primary ballot. Castro argues that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prevents Trump from holding future federal offices due to his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, which resulted in a riot at the U.S. Capitol Building by Trump supporters attempting to stop the certification of the 2020 election for President Joe Biden.

In his ruling, Aboulhosn said there was no need for an emergency restraining order or a preliminary injunction given that there were still three months until the January candidate filing period in West Virginia and eight months until the May 14 primary in the state. Castro is suing Trump and West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner.

"… (Castro) has failed to provide specific facts showing immediate and irreparable injury will occur prior to the defendants' providing a response in opposition to his motion," Aboulhosn wrote. "While he argues that he is 'already suffering irreparable competitive injuries because Defendant Donald John Trump … is siphoning off votes and contributions' from him, (Castro) fails to provide any specific facts in support of this allegation or forecast in what way this alleged damage may be impacted by the commencement of West Virginia's presidential primary filing period."

Aboulhosn's recommendations still need to be considered by U.S. District Judge Irene Berger. Castro filed his lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia on Sept. 20. 

Background:  A write-in Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential election sued Aug. 31, 2023 to keep former president Donald Trump off of next year's ballot for the sympathies he has shown to those convicted of crimes in connection with the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Courthouse News Service reported.

According to Newsweek, on Sept. 5 the legal debate about whether or not Trump to appear on the 2024 ballot made its way before the Supreme Court.

The court distributed John Castro v. Donald Trump to the justices ahead of the upcoming term, which will begin on Oct. 2.  A decision on whether the court will take the case is expected to be made on or before Oct. 9. 

Michael McAuliffe said the Supreme Court will likely be addressing whether Castro's case has any standing when it decides on the matter in a couple of weeks, rather than the actual argument about the 14th Amendment.

"Standing is a basic threshold issue and will be the subject of the Court's upcoming conference discussion," he said. "The Court might even in the end dismiss the petition based on the procedural posture of the case."

Courthouse News Service reported, "John Anthony Castro, a candidate out of Mansfield, Texas, claimed in a pro se complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court that Trump violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by providing 'aid or comfort' to an insurrection and those who participated in it, making him 'constitutionally ineligible to pursue or hold any public office in the United States.'

"Castro's status as a write-in candidate in the race for the presidency creates a cause of action allowing him to challenge whether Trump is allowed to run for public office because of potential injuries Castro could face 'in the form of a diminution of votes and/or fundraising.'"

"Castro goes on to note that the section of the 14th Amendment cited was enacted in the post-Civil War Reconstruction-era 'to ensure that non-insurrectionists did not have to politically compete with the more popular pro-insurrectionist politicians in the south,' making Castro the exact type of person the amendment was designed to protect.

"The Wisconsin Elections Commission is listed as the lead defendant in the lawsuit, which seeks an injunction blocking Trump's ballot access documentation, including nomination papers." 

The former president responded Sept. 4 on Truth Social:

"Almost all legal scholars have voiced opinions that the 14th Amendment has no legal basis or standing relative to the upcoming 2024 Presidential Election. Like Election Interference, it is just another 'trick' being used by the Radical Left Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, to again steal an Election that their candidate, the WORST, MOST INCOMPETENT, & MOST CORRUPT President in U.S. history, is incapable of winning in a Free and Fair Election. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

The Associated Press reported Sept. 1, "The 14th Amendment bars from office anyone who once took an oath to uphold the Constitution but then 'engaged' in 'insurrection or rebellion' against it. A growing number of legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump after his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the US Capitol.

And then on Sept. 6 the Associated Press reported a liberal group filed a lawsuit to bar former President Trump from the primary ballot in Colorado, arguing he is ineligible to run for the White House again under a rarely used clause in the U.S. Constitution aimed at candidates who have supported an "insurrection."

The lawsuit, citing the 14th Amendment, is likely the initial step in a legal challenge that seems destined for the U.S. Supreme Court. The complaint was filed on behalf of six Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The Associated Press then reported that attorneys for former President Trump on Sept. 7 moved to have the lawsuit moved to federal court in the first step of what promises to be a tangled legal battle that seems destined for the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Plaintiffs' challenge to Colorado's ability to place Donald Trump on the presidential ballot depends solely on the Fourteenth Amendment," Trump's lawyers wrote. "Trump's basis for removal of the state court action is federal question jurisdiction under Section 3 of Fourteenth Amendment."

And on Sept. 12, Free Speech for People, a liberal group, filed a lawsuit to block former President Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot in Minnesota, CNN reported.

(For details on the effort by Trump and his many allies to overturn the 2020 election, see "68 Days That Will Live in Infamy" below.)

According to reporting by the Associated Press on Sept. 22, dozens of lawsuits have been filed around the country seeking to disqualify Trump from the 2024 ballot based on the 14th Amendment clause barring anyone who swore an oath to the Constitution and then "engaged in insurrection" against it from running for office. Their arguments revolve around Trump's involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol to halt the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election.

Denver District Judge Sarah B. Wallace has scheduled a hearing on the Colorado lawsuit Oct. 13. A hearing on the constitutional issues will come on Oct. 30. Judge Wallace said she hopes to decide by Thanksgiving whether the 14th Amendment's ban on insurrectionists holding office means former President Trump is disqualified from appearing on the state's presidential ballot in 2024, CNN reported Sept. 18.

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Partner, estate of Capitol Police Office Brian Sicknick blame Trump, followers for his death

The estate of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died a day after defending the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack, sued Donald Trump on Jan. 5, 2023 alleging the officer's death resulted from the former president's "incendiary" rhetoric and false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In a 47-page lawsuit, lawyers for Sicknick's estate said Trump "intentionally riled up the crowd and directed and encouraged a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol and attack those who opposed him." The lawsuit cited Trump's speech at the Ellipse earlier that day, in which he urged a crowd of supporters to "fight like hell" and march to the Capitol.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

The lawsuit also names as defendants two men convicted in connection with the Capitol attack: Julian Elie Khater, who admitted last year to deploying a chemical spray against Sicknick and other officers; and George Pierre Tanios, who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges stemming from the Capitol attack.  Khater and Tanios were sentenced on Jan. 27 to seven years in prison and time served, respectively.

NBC reported Sicknick's partner, Sandra Garza, is also a party to the suit and cites comments from the medical examiner that "all that transpired" on Jan. 6 "played a role in his condition." The suit seeks $10 million from Trump and $10 million each from Khater and Tanios.

The Wall Street Journal reported lawyers for Sicknick's estate are seeking damages for alleged wrongful death and conspiracy to violate civil rights from all the defendants, as well as claims for aiding and abetting an assault.

"The horrific events of January 6, 2021, including Officer Sicknick's tragic, wrongful death, were a direct and foreseeable consequence of the Defendants' unlawful actions," the lawsuit said, referring to Trump, Khater and Tanios. "As such, the Defendants are responsible for the injury and destruction that followed."

Sicknick suffered two strokes after clashing with rioters.

The Wall Street Journal reported that in April 2021, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Washington determined that Sicknick died of a stroke and ruled the manner of his death as natural, using a term it said applied if "disease alone causes death." The office said that if a death is "hastened by an injury," it wouldn't consider the manner of death to be natural.

(According to AXIOS, medical examiner Francisco J. Diaz told the Washington Post after the autopsy that events at the Capitol on Jan. 6 "played a role in his condition.")

On March 2, 2023 Trump asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, Law 360 reported.

According to Law 360, Trump's legal team claims he has "absolute immunity" for actions taken while he was in office. "Officer Sicknick's death is a tragedy. That does not make it a tort for which President Trump is liable."

Department of Justice prosecutors told the D.C. Court that the former president is not immune from the lawsuit, Law 360 also reported.

And on Aug. 14, Trump's lawyers asked a judge to delay the case while Trump's election interference criminal case is pending in federal court, Raw Story reported.

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NAACP, Democrat House members file lawsuit for Jan. 6 attack on Capitol; Trump, Pence don't see "eye to eye" on Jan. 6 violence 

Attorneys for the NAACP filed the lawsuit against former President Trump on Feb. 16, 2021 alleging Trump incited the riot at the U.S. Capitol with his false claims about a "stolen" election. The lawsuit claims the riot amounted to a conspiracy under the 1871 Klan Act, which, in this case, outlaws interfering with a person's or persons civil rights by stopping the certification of Joe Biden's Electoral College win. 

Also named in the suit is Trump's attorney during the post-election coup attempt, Rudy Giuliani, as well as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, two extremist groups that participated in the Jan. 6 riot.

Trump on Jan. 6, 2021 told the crowd to march to the Capitol to protest the certification. "You'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong," Trump said. "We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." 

Ten Democrat members of Congress added their names to the lawsuit on April 7. The amended lawsuit describes how each narrowly escaped the mob on Jan. 6 and how some still have nightmares and anxiety months later. The members joining the lawsuit are Reps. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, Karen Bass of California, Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, Veronica Escobar of Texas, Hank Johnson Jr. of Georgia, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Barbara Lee of California, Jerry Nadler of New York, Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Maxine Waters of California.

Trump attorney Jesse Binnall asked U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta of Washington, D.C. to toss out this lawsuit, as well as those filed by Eric Swalwell and two injured U.S. Capitol Police officers, citing the president's "absolute immunity" from the civil suit on separation-of-powers and free speech grounds.

On May 27, a lawyer representing the far-right Oath Keepers militia group also asked a federal judge to throw out the lawsuit, Law & Crime reported. In a 32-page motion to dismiss filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. attorney Kerry Lee Morgan argued that "No Oath Keeper entered the Capitol violently or otherwise and therefor nothing in the amended complaint reaches to any violent act to physically prevent the House from observing the Electoral proceedings," the motion states. (However, in November, 2022, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges stemming from a mob's attack on the U.S. Capitol. Both were sentenced to long prison terms.)

On Feb. 18, 2022 Judge Mehta rejected Trump's attempt to dismiss the lawsuit, the New York Post reported. "The President's actions here do not relate to his duties of faithfully executing the laws, conducting foreign affairs, commanding the armed forces, or managing the Executive Branch," Mehta wrote in the opinion. "They entirely concern his efforts to remain in office for a second term. These are unofficial acts, so the separation-of-powers concerns that justify the President's broad immunity are not present here." 

On March 18, Trump appealed the ruling.

In a court filing in Washington, D.C. on July 27, attorneys for former President Trump asked a judge to grant him total immunity against any civil lawsuits filed in conjunction with the Jan. 6th insurrection.

According to the Washington Examiner, in the brief, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the former president is also asking the court to overturn the ruling made in February by Judge Mehta rejecting Trump's motion to dismiss.

And then on Dec. 7 the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals debated whether Trump legally responsible for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the Washington Post reported.

The federal appeals court on Dec. 20 asked the Justice Department to weigh in on whether former President Trump should be protected by absolute immunity in civil lawsuits brought against him for his alleged role in the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, CNN reported.

(Blog editor's note: See "Trump faces five separate lawsuits" below for more on Trump's request and Judge Mehta's decisions.)

Trump, Pence don't see "eye to eye" on Jan. 6 violence

The Latest:  Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Fox News reported Sept.5.

Tarrio was found guilty of seditious conspiracy by a jury in Washington, D.C. alongside three other leaders of the Proud Boys. The others were each sentenced to between 15 and 18 years.

Tarrio had been arrested in Washington, DC, days before the riot for burning a DC church's Black Lives Matter banner and bringing high-capacity rifle magazines into the district, and was ordered by a judge to leave the city.

The Department of Justice sought more than three decades for Tarrio, characterizing him as the ringleader of violent protesters. He was also ordered to 36 months of probation at the end of his sentence.

"Tarrio has repeatedly and publicly indicated that he has no regrets about what he helped make happen on January 6," prosecutors wrote.

Tarrio pleaded for leniency, describing Jan. 6 as a "national embarrassment," and apologizing to the police officers who defended the Capitol and the lawmakers who fled in fear. He expressed remorse for letting down his family and vowed that he was done with politics.

Prosecutors successfully argued, however, that Tarrio was instrumental in organizing the Proud Boys demonstrations that sought to enter and occupy the Capitol.

Tarrio's sentence is the longest, so far, for any Jan. 6 defendants. 

According to the Washington Post, "The sentences over the past week — including 22 years for Tarrio, 17 for Biggs and 15 for Rehl — bring the total number of years of incarceration in Jan. 6 sentences to about 700.

"More than 350 people have been sentenced to jail or prison time, with an average sentence of just less than two years."

Background:  The attack on the Capitol Jan. 6 was the most violent mass action in Washington, D.C. since 1812, when British soldiers burned down the Capitol and other government buildings, including the president's home.

Gerald F. Seib of the Wall Street Journal reported the FBI's official website contains 17 videos of the violence at the Capitol that day, "some so gruesome they are age-restricted so young people can't see them." Over 1,100 individuals have been brought to court over alleged involvement in the riot at the Capitol. Prosecutors have convicted more than 600 people for their participation in the violent demonstration.

However, during a phone interview March 25, 2021 on Fox News's "Ingraham Angle," former President Trump claimed, "(The crowd that invaded the capitol) was zero threat right from the start, it was zero threat" and the rioters had "great relationships" and were "hugging and kissing the police" throughout the siege. "A lot of the people were waved in, and then they walked in and they walked out." 

Former Vice President Pence on June 3 said he saw it differently. "January 6 was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol. But thanks to the swift action of the Capitol Police and federal law enforcement, violence was quelled, the Capitol was secured. And that same day we reconvened the Congress and did our duty under the Constitution and the laws of the United States."

He added: "You know, President Trump and I have spoken many times since we left office. And I don't know if we'll ever see eye to eye on that day."

Trump then called Fox News Maria Bartiromo's show July 11 and described for her the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters: "There was such love at that rally, you had over a million people, they were there for one reason, the rigged election, they felt the election was rigged. That's why they were there and they were peaceful people, these were great people, the crowd was unbelievable. And I mentioned the word love, the love in the air, I've never seen anything like it." 

In the two-and-a-half years since a mob of Trump supporters breached the Capitol, more than 1,020 people have now been charged and around 533 have pleaded guilty, the Department of Justice said April 6, 2023.

GOP Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde suggested the insurrection was far less serious than it's been portrayed. "Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures. You know, if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit."

Some of the visiting "normal" tourists - with, as Trump says, "love in the air" - included:

• Daniel Rodriguez attacked Washington, DC, police officer Michael Fanone with an electroshock weapon in the neck during the US Capitol riot on January 6. He was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison. 
  

• Scott Fairlamb, a New Jersey gym owner and former MMA fighter, pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer and obstructing an official proceeding.  He was sentenced to 41 months in prison.

• Douglas Jensen, 43, of Des Moines, Iowa led a mob of rioters chasing a Capitol Police officer up several flights of stairs. A jury found him guilty of five felonies and two misdemeanors. Jensen was sentenced to five years in prison.

• Robert Sanford of Boothwyn, Pennsylvania, a retired firefighter, was caught-on-camera slinging the steel extinguisher at officers, striking two in the head. He was sentenced in April to four-years and four months in prison. Sanford also hurled obscenities and insults at the law enforcement officers on the Lower West Terrace, calling them "traitors."

• Thomas Webster, a retired New York City Police Department officer, was convicted of several felonies for attacking a D.C. cop with a flag pole on Jan. 6 and then tackling the officer to the ground and attempting to rip off his gas mask. Webster was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.

• A "pissed off" Howard Richardson of Prussia, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to 46 months in prison for assaulting law enforcement officers with a Trump flag and joining a mob to use a giant Trump billboard as a battering ram when rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol. 
• Robert S. Palmer wore an American flag jacket and watched and cheered on the rioters before moving to the front and hurling a fire extinguisher, a plank and a long pole at police officers. He was sentenced to more than five years in federal prison.
• Kyle Toung, a Donald Trump fan who brought his teenage son along as he assaulted then-D.C. police officer Mike Fanone and another officer at the Capitol, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.
• Albuquerque Cosper Head, who grabbed former Metropolitan Police Department officer Mike Fanone and dragged him into the mob, where he was grievously injured, was sentenced to 7 1/2 years behind bars. 
• Kevin Creek, a 47-year-old former Marine, was sentenced to 27 months in prison for assaulting officers. Creek admitted to striking a D.C. police office, pushing a Capitol Police officer and kicking that same officer.
• Mark Mazza pleaded guilty to carrying a loaded firearm on US Capitol grounds and assaulting police officers with one of their own batons. Mazza told federal investigators he regretted not seeing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the riot and that they would "be here for another reason" if he had.
• Mark Ponder, a 56-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., attacked three police officers with poles and pleaded guilty to "assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers using a dangerous weapon." He was sentenced to more than five years in prison.
• Guy Reffit, a Donald Trump fan from Texas who attempted to storm the U.S. Capitol while armed with a gun, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison. He was convicted on five counts, including transport of a firearm in support of civil disorder.
• An off-duty Virginia police officer, Thomas Robertson, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison. The judge said he was troubled by Robertson's conduct since his arrest - not only his stockpiling of guns but advocating violence. 
• Both former President Trump and Florida Governor DeSantis have promised to consider pardoning some of the rioters convicted and sent to prison for their Jan. 6 crimes.

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Trump and GOP face lawsuit claiming they violated the Ku Klux Klan Act

On Nov. 20, 2020 the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, the NAACP and three African American voters filed suit alleging Donald Trump, the Trump campaign and the Republican Party attempted to suppress the Black vote in cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, and Atlanta, all of which have large communities of color, The Independent reported. 

"Under the specter of preventing 'fraud,' defendants engaged in a conspiracy, executed through a coordinated effort, to disenfranchise voters by disrupting vote counting efforts, lodging groundless challenges during recounts, and attempting to block certification of election results through intimidation and coercion of election officials and volunteers," the lawsuit claims.

According to Democracy Docket: Even after Wayne County's results had been certified, Trump personally called election officials in the county "in a last-ditch effort to disenfranchise Black voters in Detroit."

The suit was filed the day after Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, claimed during a press conference that the president's campaign had uncovered 300,000 "illegitimate ballots" cast primarily in Detroit. (President Biden won Wayne County with 597,170 votes, while Trump received 264,553 votes.)

In December, 2020, an amended complaint added the Republican National Committee as a defendant alleging violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act. More plaintiffs also signed onto the legal action, including the NAACP. (Democrat members of Congress filed a separate suit alleging violation of the KKK Act.)

The former president and the Republican National Committee filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit on February 24, 2021. The defendants also filed a motion to transfer the case from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to the Eastern District of Michigan, where some of the plaintiffs reside. The plaintiffs opposed the transfer, arguing that the conspiracy was directed from D.C., where both Trump and the RNC were located.

On April 1, 2022 Law & Crime reported that a judge ruled Trump and the Republican Party do not have to face allegations that they violated the Voting Rights Act in the 2020 presidential election. But Trump and the GOP must face claims that they violated the Ku Klux Klan Act. Trump and the RNC also lost a separate motion to transfer the remaining litigation away from Washington, D.C.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan scoffed at Trump's notion that a federal court in Washington, D.C. lacks jurisdiction to preside over the former president's claims. "This Court is presented with an argument that is perhaps as unprecedented as it is outlandish: the former President of this country denying that he lived in and had minimum contacts with the country's capital and the White House during his time as President," Judge Sullivan wrote.

And then on Nov.28, Judge Sullivan ruled Trump's conduct was "purely political" and that he was not "absolutely immune," according to Bloomberg.

"If former President Trump disrupted the certification of the electoral vote count, as Plaintiffs allege here, such actions would not constitute executive action in defense of the Constitution," said Sullivan. "For these reasons, the Court concludes that Former President Trump is not immune from monetary damages in this suit."

According to the legal website, JustSecurity.com, this lawsuit is still active as of August, 2023.

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Rep. Swalwell files lawsuit alleging Trump, others responsible for Jan. 6 riot

Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell of California filed a lawsuit against former President Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-S.C.) on March 4, 2021 alleging they and others are "responsible for the injury and destruction" that occurred during the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (In June, it was reported the riot caused $1.5 million in damage to the building.)  Swalwell accuses the four of violating both federal civil rights and local incitement laws.

From AXIOS:

The lawsuit - filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.,- accuses Trump and his allies of conspiring to violate the civil rights of the plaintiff.

• "As a direct and foreseeable consequence of the Defendants' false and incendiary allegations of fraud and theft, and in direct response to the Defendants' express calls for violence at the rally, a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol," the complaint alleges. "Many participants in the attack have since revealed that they were acting on what they believed to be former President Trump's orders in service of their country."
• The defendants "by force, intimidation, or threat, agreed and conspired with one another to undertake a course of action to prevent" Joe Biden from being certified as the election winner.

The investigation comes after Trump's digital media company and Digital World, a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC), announced they had raised $1 billion in capital. None of the investors were identified, which is highly unusual for this sort of transaction, AXIOS reported.

The deal is expected to provide proceeds of approximately $1.25 billion, assuming full delivery of the amount of cash held in trust by DWAC.

The Hill reported that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) penned a letter to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler requesting that the agency open an investigation into the deal between Digital World and Trump Media & Technology Group.

Warren suggested that the deal had violated the Securities Act of 1933 because Patrick Orlando, the sponsor of Digital World, allegedly had conversations about an agreement with Trump as early as March 2021, well before the SPAC made its first filing in May and launched its initial public offering (IPO) in September.

According to Sen. Warren, under the 1933 statute, SPACs must disclose any form of direct or indirect contact with potential target companies to protect investors who get involved at the time of the IPO. The talks between Trump and Orlando were not disclosed in SEC regulatory filings, according to public records and news reports.

(The Washington Post defined a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC) as a shell company that is set up to take a private company public by merging with it. They are called "blank check" companies because public investors can purchase shares without knowing what the shell firm will eventually buy. For investors, the hope is that stock price will shoot up when an acquisition target is announced. In October, 2022, it was reported that Trump and Orlando began talks to create Trump Media and merge it with a SPAC as early as Spring, 2021.)

Truth Social was launched with much hype and fanfare on Feb. 21, 2022 with former GOP Congressman Devin Nunes, a rancher from California's central valley with no tech development experience, as its CEO. 

And Trump finally joined Truth Social on April 28, posting on the social media platform for the first time.

Federal securities regulators expanded their investigation into possible securities violations related to the planned merger, according to a June 13 filing with the SEC.  Axios reported, "Why it matters: Truth Social's financial prospects are heavily reliant on investment tied to the merger, which may never come to pass."

And then Trump's media company was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in Manhattan in connection with a criminal probe into its planned merger with Digital World, CNBC reported.  (The Trump company also received a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding a civil probe on June 27, DWAC said.)

Big investors are starting to eye the exits on the $1.3 billion bid to take Trump's social media startup public, Politico reported Oct. 3.

The hedge funds, trading firms and other major backers are questioning whether the financial riches that first attracted them to the transaction are still strong enough to hold their interest in a deal fraught with troubles, according to four investors who asked not to be named.  Already, investors who had promised $138 million in capital have pulled out.

At a campaign rally on Oct. 1, Trump told supporters, "If they don't come up with the financing, I'll have it private. Truth Social is hot!"

The Stock Dork reported Oct. 12: "Now, the SPAC company, Digital World Acquisition Group (DWAC), seems to be struggling financially as the SPAC deal is in limbo. The company now lists its address as 3109 Grand Avenue in Miami, Florida.  A search of the address verifies this as a UPS store in Coconut Grove, Miami."

The Pew Research Center reported on Nov. 18 that 27 percent of U.S. adults say they have heard of Truth Social but only two percent use the site for news. Thirty-one percent of U.S. adults say they use Facebook and 14 percent Twitter for news.

CNBC reported Nov. 22 that DWAC said shareholders voted to delay a deadline for its merger with the former president's firm until September 2023. In a securities filing Nov. 21, DWAC said there was "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue as a "going concern."

As of January, 2023, Trump has 4.9 million followers on Truth Social, a fraction of the 88 million he has on Twitter.

On March 17, The Guardian reported federal prosecutors in New York investigating Trump's social media company "examined" whether it violated money laundering laws by accessing $8 million in loans with suspected Russia ties.

Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell explained on MSNBC that prosecutors "got a tip" at the end of last year over the loans that came at a time when Trump's company was "cash poor."

"They went and got bridge financing from first a bank, then in February 2022 they got a second loan of $6 million from two different companies," Lowell said. "As it turned out, they're pretty much one and the same company, and if you trace the beneficiaries back you get to the nephew of a Putin ally who was the first deputy justice minister in Russia and previously served in Putin's executive office."

Dan Alexander at Forbes reported April 4, "Truth Social is adding an estimated 100,000 users per month. If people continue to join at the current pace—and assuming that no one quits or dies—Truth Social will not hit its projected 81 million users until 2086. By that point, Trump would be 140 years old. A more likely outcome: Truth Social will join Trump Steaks, Trump University and GoTrump.com in the graveyard of failed Trump ventures."

Executives for the SPAC tied to struggling Truth Social are facing a September deadline to get SEC approval for their pending merger or they will be forced to return millions to investors. According to an April 2 report from the New York Times, two different investigations are tying up the merger between Digital World Acquisition Corp. and Trump Media & Technology Group with $300 million at stake.

As the Times reports, "That deal has been waylaid by two intensifying federal investigations. One is focused on whether preliminary merger discussions between Digital World and Trump Media violated federal securities laws. The other investigation is looking at whether a group of early investors in Digital World — who were brought into the deal by Patrick Orlando — engaged in improper trading."

Shares of Digital World Acquisition (DWAC) surged on July 21 as a settlement with U.S. securities regulator over fraud charges cleared some of the uncertainty over the blank-check firm's merger with former U.S. President Donald Trump's media and tech company, Reuters reported.

The special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) agreed to pay $18 million in fine to settle charges that it had made "material misrepresentations" to investors if it closes the merger.

Shareholders in Digital World Acquisition, the investment partner of former president Trump's media start-up, voted to approve an extension of the company's merger deadline and give it more time to complete the deal," the Washington Post reported Sept 5. "The extension will give the special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, another year to finalize its long-stalled merger with the parent company of the pro-Trump social network Truth Social." Digital World and Trump Media were originally scheduled to merge in 2022.

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Trump's A-Team: Meadows, Powell, Giuliani and Eastman have all been indicted

Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Constitution "expert" John Eastman - the lawyer who advised President Trump that Vice President Pence had the power to decide who won the 2020 election - are all under investigation, being sues or facing criminal charges from California to the New York island.

All four, plus former President Trump, were indicted on anti-racketeering and corruption charges after a years-long criminal investigation led by state prosecutors in Georgia into their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state, Fox News reported Aug. 14, 2023.

Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman and others were also charged with racketeering under Georgia's anti-racketeering and corruption statutes.

And in related news, Giuliani, Eastman and Powell have all been identified as unindicted co-conspirators in the federal grand jury Jan. 6-related indictment of Donald Trump.

Powell update:  See "Georgia county grand jury indicts Trump and 18 allies for effort to overturn state election, trials begin Oct. 23" above for latest threat to Powell.