FILE PHOTO: Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump attends a campaign event sponsored by conservative group Turning Point USA, in Duluth, Georgia, US, October 23, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo | Photo credit: Reuters

Donald Trump’s election victory not only catapults him back to the White House, but also grants him a reprieve from looming lawsuits and sky-high legal bills.

As US president, the 78-year-old Trump can let the federal criminal cases he faces disappear and postpone state cases until he leaves the Oval Office in four years.

Special counsel Jack Smith has filed two federal charges against Mr. Trump, accusing him of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results and mishandling top-secret documents after he left the White House.

He also faces racketeering charges for his alleged efforts to undermine the 2020 election results in Georgia, and was convicted in a hush-money case in New York in May. But a Supreme Court ruling in May granted him broad immunity from criminal prosecution.

Mr. Trump promised during the election campaign to fire Mr. Smith “within two seconds” of taking office, even though he does not have the authority as president. But he could appoint a new attorney general who could do that. The new president could also simply order the Justice Department to drop the charges.

Mr. Smith, who was appointed by Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden’s attorney general, has filed two cases against Mr. Trump — for conspiring to overturn the election results and for mishandling top-secret documents after he left the White House. had left home.

Mr Trump is also accused of conspiring to defraud the US and of conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding – the session of Congress convened to certify Biden’s victory, who was violently attacked on January 6, 2021 by a gang of his supporters.

The Republican has also been accused of trying to disenfranchise American voters with his false claims that he won the 2020 election.

His documents case was dismissed by a federal judge in Florida, a Trump appointee, on the grounds that Mr. Smith had been unlawfully appointed. The special counsel has appealed the dismissal, but both federal cases appear doomed now that Trump has won the presidency.

He was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying company records to cover up a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to keep her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.

Trump was scheduled to be sentenced in July, but his lawyers asked that his conviction be overturned in light of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

Judge Juan Merchan will rule on the dismissal request on November 12 and has set the sentencing – if that is still necessary – for November 26.

Mr. Trump, the first former president convicted of a crime, faces up to four years in prison on each charge. However, because he was a first-time offender, he was considered much more likely to receive a fine and probation — and that was before his victory in the White House.

“It would also be possible to get a deferred sentence if it involves a prison sentence,” said Claire Finkelstein, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

In Georgia, Mr. Trump faces racketeering charges over his efforts to undermine the 2020 results in the southern state, but that case is likely to be frozen while he is in office, under a federal policy of banning an incumbent president not to prosecute.

The case has also been mired in allegations of impropriety by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who had an intimate relationship with the man she hired as a special prosecutor.