CNN
—

Donald Trump has been re-elected to the White House as a convicted felon awaiting sentencing in his New York hush money case and still working to avoid prosecution in other state and federal cases.

It’s an extraordinarily unique position he finds himself in: Never before has a criminal defendant been elected to the highest office in the land, just as an ex-president was never criminally charged until last year.

Trump has said several times that he plans to fire special counsel Jack Smith and end federal cases against him over his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election and mishandling of classified documents.

“Aggressively pushing to delay these cases as long as possible has clearly paid off,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor of constitutional law at Loyola Law School.

In the meantime, a judge in New York will sentence the former president later this month after waiting to hand down the sentence before Election Day to avoid any appearance of influencing the outcome of the presidential race – although from lawyers Trump is expected to do the same. ask the judge to delay the sentencing now that he is the president-elect.

Trump has denied that he is guilty of all charges. Here’s what you need to know about the four criminal cases:

Trump will appear in a New York courtroom on November 26 to receive punishment for his conviction earlier this year on 34 counts of falsifying corporate records to cover up a hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign . who alleged a previous affair with the president-elect. (Trump denies the affair.)

Whether that conviction will happen at all remains an open question.

Judge Juan Merchan has given himself a Nov. 12 deadline to decide whether to vacate the conviction, following the Supreme Court’s decision this summer granting a president some presidential immunity. If Merchan does so, the charges will be dismissed and Trump will not be convicted.

But if the judge decides to leave the conviction intact, the former president’s lawyers are expected to ask Merchan to delay Trump’s sentencing so they can appeal. And if that’s not granted, his lawyers plan to appeal the immunity decision to the appellate courts and possibly even to the U.S. Supreme Court to ask the courts to delay Trump’s sentencing until all appeals have been exhausted. which can take months.

Should Merchan proceed with the sentencing, Trump could be ordered to serve as many as four years in prison, but the judge is not required to sentence the president-elect to prison, and he could impose a lesser sentence, such as probation. a prison sentence, community service or a fine.

Any punishment will, of course, be complicated by the fact that Trump will come to power on January 20, 2025. Trump’s lawyers are likely to shape their appeal to raise constitutional issues that call into question whether a state judge can convict a newly elected president. the case could remain in court for years.

Because it is a matter of state, Trump does not have the power to pardon himself next year after he is sworn in.

Federal cases in DC and Florida

Trump’s election victory will likely have the biggest impact on the two federal criminal cases Smith has filed against him in Washington, DC and Florida.

Since the cases were filed in 2023, Trump’s main legal strategy has been to delay the trials until after the election so that, if elected, he can fire Smith, leading to the end of the two cases. At the end of October, the former president said he would take such a step without hesitation.

‘Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy,” Trump said when conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked him whether he would “pardon yourself” or “fire Jack Smith” if he were re-elected.

“I would fire him in two seconds,” Trump said.

Firing Smith would allow the Justice Department and Trump’s attorney general to drop charges against him and end the lawsuits.

But until Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, Smith has time to weigh his options on issues the department has never faced before.

One of the first hurdles is whether the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel believes that a president-elect has the same legal protections from prosecution as a sitting president. That guidance would determine the next course of action, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

Could Trump fire Jack Smith if elected? Reporter explains

More than a half-dozen people close to the special counsel’s office or other top Justice Department officials told CNN they believe Smith won’t close the store until he is ordered to do so or pushed out by Trump.

Federal law requires Smith to provide a confidential report on his office’s work to the attorney general before leaving the post.

In the DC case, Smith accused Trump of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss. The case languished for months as Trump urged federal courts to grant him presidential immunity, and in July the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling saying he had done so. some immunity from criminal prosecution.

The federal judge overseeing the trial has decided how much of Trump’s conduct at the heart of the case is protected by immunity, after prosecutors last month laid out their arguments for why the ruling should have no impact on the case.

The charges Smith filed against the president-elect in Florida accuse Trump of illegally taking classified documents from the White House and resisting government efforts to retrieve the materials. That case was dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon in July, but prosecutors have appealed her ruling, which said Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Smith was unconstitutional.

The immediate fate of Trump’s criminal case in Georgia depends largely on whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, is disqualified from prosecuting the case following her past romantic relationship with a fellow prosecutor. But even if she is allowed to continue prosecuting Trump, the case would almost certainly be in jeopardy now that he has been elected.

Criminal charges against Trump for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election are effectively stayed while the appeals court decides whether to disqualify Willis, a decision not expected until 2025.

If Willis is removed, sources tell CNN that it is unlikely that another prosecutor will want to take the case and it will effectively disappear.

Sources familiar with the case said it is unlikely that a state-level judge would allow the proceedings to proceed if Trump is president, and in that scenario, Trump’s lawyers would certainly move to have the case dismissed.

There is no clear answer to the question of whether a state-level prosecutor like Willis can prosecute a sitting president. Trump’s victory now forces Willis to confront that constitutional issue, in addition to existing legal issues already uncertain about the future of the Georgia case.

The former president is also defending himself in a litany of civil lawsuits, including those over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, two defamation lawsuits by E. Jean Carroll and a civil fraud case brought by the New York government. attorney general where Trump was ordered to pay nearly $454 million in damages.

In September, state and federal appeals courts in New York heard arguments on two of Trump’s civil appeals.

Trump lost two defamation cases against Carroll in federal court in 2023 and 2024 after a jury found him liable for sexually assaulting the former columnist and then defaming her. Two juries awarded Carroll $5 million and $83 million.

A federal appeals court heard Trump’s appeal to dismiss the first Carroll ruling in September. The court has not yet made a ruling.

Later that month, a state appeals court heard arguments in Trump’s efforts to dismiss the $454 million civil fraud judgment against him, in which a judge ruled that he, his adult sons and his company fraudulently misrepresented the value of Trump had inflated his assets to get better loans and insurance rates.

The five-judge appeals court appeared open to a reduction in the fine imposed on Trump, although it has also not yet ruled. This ruling can be appealed to the highest court of appeals in New York.

Trump also continues to face civil lawsuits filed by Democratic lawmakers and others over his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

It is possible that all of these cases will continue to occur even as Trump completes his second term in the White House. In a 1997 Supreme Court ruling stemming from a civil lawsuit involving then-President Bill Clinton, the justices unanimously ruled that sitting presidents could not invoke presidential immunity to avoid civil lawsuits while in office.