What happens to Trump's criminal prosecutions now?
(The Hill) – Former President Trump a year ago was staring down four potential criminal trials on 91 charges and decades in prison.
Trump staked his defense on winning back the White House, a strategy that looks to have paid off with his projected political victory.
Trump is expected to grind the cases to a halt after his projected victory against Vice President Harris, as called by Decision Desk HQ early Wednesday morning. He would also be the first convicted felon to reach the nation’s highest office.
With impending control of the Justice Department, Trump can shutter his federal criminal cases. As for his state cases, Trump’s lawyers are expected to ask judges to put his Georgia and New York prosecutions on ice.
Trump has long signaled he plans to immediately dismantle special counsel Jack Smith’s office upon retaking the White House.
“It’s so easy. I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt last month.
That would effectively end two federal cases against Trump.
In the first case, he is accused of conspiring to subvert the 2020 election results. In the second case in Florida, he faces charges related to mishandling classified documents after leaving office and obstructing the government’s effort to retrieve them.
Trump could also have his Justice Department merely abandon its current appeal seeking to revive the documents case. A federal judge had dismissed the case by finding Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.
Trump’s state-level criminal cases aren’t being prosecuted by the Justice Department, limiting his control over their next steps.
He cannot directly fire Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), who convicted Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records for illegally concealing a hush money payment during his 2016 campaign, or Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D), who is prosecuting Trump on racketeering charges over the 2020 election.
Still, his lawyers have long signaled that an election victory would delay any prosecution until the end of his time in office — in 2029.
“Mr. Sadow, if your client does win the election in 2024, could he even be tried in 2025?” Georgia Judge Scott McAfee asked Trump attorney Steve Sadow at a hearing last December.
“The answer to that is, I believe, that under the Supremacy Clause and his duties as president of the United States, this trial would not take place at all until after he left his term of office,” replied Sadow.
If Trump had lost, his criminal cases were expected to plow full steam ahead — likely starting with his sentencing in New York later this month for falsifying business records to conceal a hush money deal with a porn star ahead of his 2016 presidential campaign.
Judge Juan Merchan, the New York state judge overseeing that case, delayed Trump’s sentencing earlier this year until Nov. 26, ensuring he would not face any criminal punishment until after the election.
“The Court is a fair, impartial, and apolitical institution,” Merchan wrote in his Sept. 6 decision. “Adjourning decision on the motion and sentencing, if such is required, should dispel any suggestion that the Court will have issued any decision or imposed sentence either to give an advantage to, or to create a disadvantage for, any political party and/or any candidate for any office.”
It’s unclear whether Trump's sentencing will go forward as planned.
In Georgia, Willis won her own reelection race, according to The Associated Press, allowing her to maintain her spot leading Trump’s prosecution — at least for now. A state appeals court is weighing whether she should be removed over her romantic relationship with a former special prosecutor on the case.
With Trump headed to the White House, the appeals court may not have the chance to reach a ruling. Sadow, Trump’s Georgia attorney, wrote on the social platform X that he now has “the honor of representing the next & 47th president of the United States.”
Trump’s federal cases, meanwhile, face more dire straits.
If Trump lost, the special counsel was set to continue efforts to bring back the federal documents case in Florida. So far, legal teams for the government and Trump have filed their briefs to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit; a date for oral arguments has not been set.
In Trump’s federal election subversion case, Smith filed a massive court filing last month laying out the framework of the future of his case within the new confines of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.
Trump’s legal team was expected to file its reply in the coming weeks, after which U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan would determine how the prosecution should proceed. Attorneys on both sides and outside legal observers expected her ruling to ultimately be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Over her 15 months overseeing the case, Chutkan repeatedly said that she wouldn’t consider Trump’s campaign.
“I am definitely not getting drawn into an election,” she said during a September hearing.
Now, the election outcome is poised to draw the case to a close.