Analysis | Donald Trump indicted, under legal fire for multiple alleged crimes
Trump was indicted March 30 for hush money given to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016. Prosecutors are leading five other legal investigations regarding Jan.6, tax fraud in New York, the documents found in the Mar-a-Lago raid and rape allegations. WikiCommons
Former President Donald Trump was arrested Tuesday, April 4 and pled not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in relation to an alleged sex scandal. This came after an indictment handed out March 30 by the grand jury of New York for hush money payments allegedly made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.
There are also multiple other criminal investigations against Trump as the 2024 presidential election approaches.
Trump is now not only the first former U.S. president to be impeached by the House twice but also the first ex-president to face criminal charges.
The Daniels-related indictment is only one of six prosecutor investigations — leaving more indictments possible, according to Cheryl Niro, an expert on legal ethics and member of the Board of Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD). Legal investigations of potential crimes committed by Trump ensue across the U.S. in states such as Georgia, Washington and Florida.
Niro has been closely following the Trump investigations, with the LDAD board seeking accountability for the former president’s alleged offenses against the Constitution.
“I am involved with 15 people — we are elder statesmen who practiced law for many years — and we concluded that The Rule of Law is severely threatened,” Niro told The Panther. “What I think is the saddest part is the fact that there are so many good people who have for one reason or another taken seriously (Trump’s) narrative about a deep state or ‘rigged’ elections that are designed to keep Trump out of office.”
According to Niro, although the Jan. 6 insurrection occurred during Trump’s presidency, criminal investigations such as those on the Trump family’s tax fraudulence in New York and the Daniels scandal — occurring before his presidency — were “put on hold,” leaving many convictions against the former president overdue.
Whether or not one believes that a president may be indicted while in office, H.R. 2678 ensures that, once a president leaves office, indictments can be sought.
“I think the simplest way to understand it is there were investigations that were going on prior to his presidency that got put on hold during Trump’s presidency, but are now cranked up again because he is an appropriate candidate for criminal indictment,” Niro said.
This leaves many unresolved questions for the American public regarding what charges Trump will be given in regard to the other investigations, as most grand jury inner workings are concealed from the public, according to Rule 6 of Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.
“I say this not only as a political science major but also as a human being desperately trying to hold onto my faith in humanity: Donald Trump must be held accountable for all his transgressions,” freshman political science major Jiya Kathuria told The Panther.
Here is what is known so far about the other five investigations.
The Jan 6. Insurrection — Washington, D.C.
After he had heard from many of his top political and legal advisers that he had lost, Trump stated in a Jan. 6, 2021 tweet that it was “statistically impossible” to have lost the 2020 election. This resulted in more tweets, which incited his supporters to gather at the U.S. Capitol in protest.
This led a mob of his supporters to descend on the U.S. Capitol, attempting to interfere with the certification of electoral votes from the 2020 presidential election — a legal offense to the 14th amendment's ban on insurrections.
“The most serious (prosecutor investigation) is Trump’s incitement of the rioting at the Capitol, as it qualifies for sedition under any reasonable interpretation of what sedition is,” Niro told The Panther. “Sedition is the crime of acting against your own country when you are an official of your country.”
A House committee panel has spent a year and a half examining the role that Trump played in his efforts to hold onto power after his electoral defeat in November 2020. The panel's 845-page report — disclosing in detail the events that led to the attack on the Capitol — concluded that Trump and some of his associates had devised “a multipart plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” denoting that Trump’s inciting of the insurrection and conspiracy to defraud the U.S., among other federal crimes, would allow the Justice Department to prosecute him.
100+ Classified Documents in the Mar-a-Lago Raid — Florida
According to Niro, the next most serious investigation is another act of sedition: the finding of over 100 classified documents in the Mar-a-Lago raid. These documents were supposed to have been turned over to the National Archives at the conclusion of the Trump administration. Trump had stated that none of the found documents had been classified, a statement that was later proven false.
Niro does not believe that possessing these documents was “accidental” since Trump denied having the classified documents or ever stealing them in the first place. Niro mentioned that when the National Archives investigated Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence for any stolen documents, they were compliant, and thus under less legal fire.
“In both of those cases, they were cooperative vice presidents,” Niro said, referring to Biden and Pence’s vice presidencies. “They both said, ‘Hey, if we did anything, we didn’t mean to.’ Trump, however, got his lawyers into trouble by not only concealing the fact that he had several documents in various locations but swearing to his lawyers that there was nothing there and pushing two lawyers into telling a federal investigator, swearing on their oath as lawyers, that he has nothing else.”
The warrant justifying the search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home detailed the crimes the former president could be convicted of with the over 100 documents found. The crimes relate to the defiance of the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the unauthorized retention of national security secrets, obstruction and concealing or destroying government documents.
According to Niro, Trump’s motives and what the classified documents remain under speculation by the public.
“The documents are classified, which means very few people can see them,” Niro said. “By their very nature, they could be the codes for launching nuclear missiles. They could be the location of undercover Americans who are working in espionage situations (and) their identities (and) home phone numbers. They could be the location of army forces.”
It remains unclear precisely what crime Judge Beryl Howell and the government will convict Trump of given the presented evidence.
“Prosecutors had reason to conclude that (Trump’s stealing and concealing) was on purpose,” Niro said. “The management of documents threatened national security. This serious criminal exposure could lead to Trump having years in prison, although I am not a genius about criminal penalties.”
Fraudulent Tax Overvaluing Before Trump’s Presidency — New York
The former president is also under fire in New York for a September 2022 lawsuit where New York Attorney General Letitia James accused Trump of lying to lenders and insurers by fraudulently overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars.
“This is a situation where even before being president, the Trump enterprises would value their properties extremely high when they were calculating their net worth for purposes of getting loans from international banks,” Niro said. “But then, when it was time to pay property taxes on those same properties, Trump would devalue them dramatically. This is tax fraud.”
Because James’s investigation is civil, she can sue Trump but cannot file criminal charges. If she were to prevail at trial, a judge could impose steep financial penalties on Trump and restrict his business operations in New York.
Phone Call Begging for 11,780 Votes — Georgia
Prosecutors in Georgia are expected to make a decision soon on whether to seek indictments in their investigation of Trump and some of his allies over their efforts to interfere with the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state, which includes a pleading phone call to Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State in Georgia.
This phone call violates Georgia’s racketeering law, making it illegal for a person to intentionally solicit, request, command or otherwise attempt to cause another person to engage in election fraud.
According to Niro, Trump also violated the Elections Act, which has national legal standing that goes beyond the state of Georgia. Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, will ultimately decide what charges to seek and then bring them before a regular grand jury. Her decision is expected to be made by May 2023.
Rape Allegations — New York
Writer Jean E. Carroll is also proceeding with lawsuits alleging rape and defamation against Trump. According to an NPR report, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan denied Trump's motion to dismiss Carroll’s rape allegations and upheld the constitutionality of New York's Adult Survivors Act.
This means that a trial could proceed in New York against Trump for the rape allegations from Carroll that precede his presidency.
Although Carroll’s allegations are most foreseeable to hit trial this year in New York, approximately 20 other women are accusing the ex-president of sexual misconduct before and during his presidency, according to Niro and sources including Insider.
Trump’s violations of the New York Adult Survivors Act and Title IX have the potential to become an entire other prosecution in itself.
Editor’s note: Niro’s statements regarding the ongoing investigations are based on her sentiments only and are not explicitly connected to the Lawyers Defending American Democracy Organization itself. This story was updated April 5.