Donald Trump is now the subject of four criminal cases – at a time when he is hot on the trail of another stint in the White House.
The former president was indicted, again, by a grand jury in Georgia on 14 August – less than a month after Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith unveiled charges against him for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
This time, Mr Trump was charged with 13 counts related to his alleged actions and conspiracy to change election results in Georgia in the days following the election that he lost.
The ex-president was charged alongside 18 other defendants in a whopping total of 41 counts related to the conspiracy.
In the 98-page unsealed indictment, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Wilis outlined the ways that Mr Trump and his co-defendants allegedly conspired to replace electors with fake ones, unlawfully access voter data, harassed election workers and solicit public officials to reject election results.
The charges stem from Ms Willis’ years-long investigation into Mr Trump and his allies’ efforts.
This is the fourth criminal indictment Mr Trump is facing this year.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump was subject to a Justice Department special counsel indictment surrounding his alleged illegal retention of government papers and showing highly-classified information to unauthorised persons on two separate occasions, among many other allegations.
He became the first-ever former or current president to face criminal charges when a New York City grand jury voted to indict him on criminal charges over hush money payments allegedly made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 presidential election.
He pleaded not guilty in that case to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in order to conceal an alleged scheme to illegally influence the national vote by suppressing negative stories about him.
That followed another Manhattan civil jury finding Mr Trump liable for the sexual abuse of Elle magazine columnist E Jean Carroll in a dressing room of the exclusive Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s.
Former president Donald Trump appears in a Manhattan court for his first arraignment of the year on Tuesday 4 April 2023— (AP)
Ms Carroll, 79, sued the former president for assaulting her and then “destroying” her reputation when he accused of lying about the encounter, claiming that she was not his “type”.
He also faces a $250m civil lawsuit from New York attorney general Letitia James, whose investigation allegedly reveals “years of illegal conduct to inflate his net worth... to deceive banks and the people of the great state of New York.”
Mr Trump remains the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination for president and has insisted that he will remain in the race regardless of any outcome of the criminal cases against him. He also has relied on news of the investigations and indictments to raise money for his campaign, which has netted millions of dollars.
The former president is also set to be indicted in Georgia for his attempts to overturn the election results in the state. While District Attorney Fani Willis hasn’t confirmed that an indictment will be handed down this week, her earlier statements and security measures surrounding the Fulton County courthouse indicate that movement is imminent in the case.
But with potential convictions and judgments in both state and federal indictments and with multi-million dollar lawsuits to fight, what will the state of chaos mean for Mr Trump’s political future?
Can Trump still run for president?
In short, yes. There are no restrictions in the US Constitution to prevent anyone under indictment or convicted of a crime – or even currently serving prison time, for that matter – from running for or winning the presidency.
Even if Mr Trump were to be tried and convicted in one of the so-called “speedy trials”, he could still run the entirety of his presidential campaign from a prison cell.
What is far less clear is what would happen were he to win in that scenario.
Just as there are no restrictions in the constitution on a person running while under indictment, there is no explanation for what should occur in the event that they win.
There is nothing in the founding document that would automatically grant Mr Trump a reprieve from prison time, save for the likelihood that any charges brought by federal authorities, were they still being litigated at the point when he assumed the presidency for a second time, would be dropped due to the Justice Department’s refusal to prosecute a sitting president.
In Ms Carroll’s case, Mr Trump did not face any jail time because it was a civil trial.
State-level charges like the ones filed by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg in the hush money case are far trickier and would fall outside of Mr Trump’s prospective presidential pardon power were they to conclude in a conviction.
Were conviction on state charges to occur alongside a Trump election victory, it would likely lead to a massive legal fight to determine whether there was a way for the former president to worm his way out of serving time.
If Mr Trump was unable to avoid that outcome, it would almost certainly lead to his impeachment (for a historic third time) or removal via the 25th Amendment, which allows the Cabinet to remove a president who is unable to perform their duties.
There are many duties and trappings of the presidency that he would simply be unable to fulfill from a prison cell, the viewing of classified materials to name just one.
Any potential conviction of Mr Trump is still a long way off and little more than a distant possibility.
But the conversations he has started with his bid for the presidency, despite facing four indictments and multiple criminal investigations, have already pushed parts of theoretical US constitutional law into a much more real place than many experts ever believed they would live to see.
What has Trump said about the probes?
The former president has repeatedly characterised the multiple investigations against him, including the January 6 probe, as a politically motivated “hoax” and an attempt to “steal” the 2024 election from him.
On 1 August, Mr Trump called Mr Smith “deranged” and the January 6 charges a “fake indictment”.
“The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes. President Trump has always followed the law and the Constitution with advice from many highly accomplished attorneys,” a statement from Mr Trump’s campaign read.
On 3 August, the former commander-in-chief left his arraignment in DC after pleading not guilty to the 2020 election charges and told the press: “When you look at what’s happening this is a persecution of a political opponent.
“This was never supposed to happen in America. This is the persecution of the person that’s leading by very, very substantial numbers in the Republican primary and leading Joe Biden by a lot so if you can’t beat them you persecute them or prosecute ‘em.”
In response to his Georgia indictment, Mr Trump claimed it was “bogus” saying it was a violation of his First Amendment right.
This story was updated on 4 August 2023 to reflect new developments
