The legal drama surrounding former President Donald Trump, who is running for president in 2024, has never been more intense.
Trump has already been indicted twice this year, and he continues to face legal challenges on multiple fronts.
In New York, a hush money payment to an adult film star has resulted in his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury over his alleged role in the scheme – the first time in American history that a current or former president faces criminal charges.
Then, in June, special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump on 37 counts related to the investigation of documents that were allegedly mishandled when they were taken to Mar-a-Lago in Florida after Trump left office.
Trump pleaded not guilty in both cases.
In the documents case, the National Archives, charged with collecting and sorting presidential material, had previously said that at least 15 boxes of White House records were recovered from Mar-a-Lago, including some classified records.
Trump was also caught on tape in a 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where the former president discussed holding secret documents he did not declassify.
In the New York case, Trump was charged in Manhattan criminal court for falsifying business records related to his role in a hush money payment scheme involving adult film actress Stormy Daniels late in the 2016 presidential campaign.
The former president surrendered and was placed under arrest April 4, before he was arraigned in a historic and unprecedented court appearance, at which he pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors, led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, accuse Trump of falsifying business records with the intent to conceal illegal conduct connected to his 2016 presidential campaign.
The indictment sent shockwaves across the country, pushing the American political system – which has never seen one of its ex-leaders confronted with criminal charges, let alone while running again for president – into uncharted waters.
The $130,000 payment was paid by former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen to Daniels to remain quiet about an alleged affair between Daniels and Trump years earlier. Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels and says the probe by Bragg, a Democrat, is politically motivated.
Also in Manhattan, a federal jury found Trump sexually abused former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the mid-1990s and awarded her about $5 million in the battery and defamation civil case. In Atlanta, a select grand jury has investigated the efforts by Trump and allies to overturn his election loss in Georgia in 2020.
Read more about the legal challenges Trump faces here.
