Although he has just been re-elected president of the United States, Donald Trump remains criminally convicted and indicted in several cases. What will be the impact of his second term in the White House on American justice?
Donald Trump has just been re-elected President of the United States this Wednesday, November 5, 2024, after his first coronation of 2016. So, for the first time in history, a criminally indicted personality will lead the country. The real estate mogul has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. In total, the new president of the world’s leading power is cited in four criminal cases. He must first appear before a New York court on November 26 to hear the sentence concerning the case of falsification of commercial records (34 counts), allowing the concealment of a payment made during the 2016 campaign to the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who revealed their affair.
Trump could pardon himself
In this case, Judge Juan Merchan could decide to overturn the president’s conviction, which Trump’s lawyers will logically demand. Conversely, if a sentence is imposed, Trump could be ordered to serve it. He faces up to four years in prison. For a president, this sanction can be reduced and transformed into a home prison sentence, a fine or community service. But in fact, Trump’s taking office on January 20 could call everything into question. The president’s lawyers could raise constitutional arguments over the possibility of a conviction of a president-elect, which could stall the case for “several years,” CNN says.
Be careful, as surprising as it may seem, it is important to keep in mind that the ex-president can also pardon himself for federal crimes, subject to validation by the Supreme Court. States can impose ineligibilities on convicts for local warrants, but not for federal warrants. In addition, as head of the executive, he will be able, as of January 20, 2025, to order his Department of Justice to drop the charges against him in the Stormy Daniels affair.
Magistrates removed from office?
Concerning his affairs in Florida and Washington, D.C.Trump used the delay to have the trial rescheduled after the election, giving him the opportunity to fire Jack Smith, special prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice. Donald Trump had already announced that he would take this measure without hesitation: “It’s so simple”, he said, “I would fire him in two seconds”. The objective: that all charges against him in these regions be dropped. Jack Smith now has a little over two months, until January 20, 2025, to decide how to proceed with these cases. “Under federal law, Smith must provide a confidential report on the work of his office to the attorney general before leaving his post,” specifies CNN. As a reminder, in the DC affair, Smith criticized Trump for his actions to overturn his electoral defeat in 2020.
In Georgia, for the fourth case in which Donald Trump is cited, everything will rest on the disqualification or not of the Fulton County prosecutor, Democrat Fani Willis. Here, the new president of UNITED STATES is accused of trying to annul the results of the 2020 presidential election. If the prosecutor is fired, it is unlikely that a colleague will quickly take up the case to take it over, which would benefit Donald Trump, still in his strategy of temporizing with regard to justice. Trump’s lawyers could ask that the case be dismissed.
As a reminder, Donald Trump is also being civilly prosecuted for his role in theassault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, a defamation case against E. Jean Carroll and a civil fraud case brought by the New York government. Ordered to pay the sum of $454 million in damages as part of this fraud case, Donald Trump could count on the Court of Appeal which seems open to reducing his fine even if no decision has yet been rendered . In reality, all these cases and prosecutions could continue their course, or even be abandoned in some cases, even though Donald Trump will lead his second term in the Oval Office of the White House.