A criminal investigation in the state of Georgia. The extension of a New York-based probe into Donald Trump’s business empire. Lawsuits filed by women claiming Trump attacked them. Launched billions of defamation lawsuits against people who act on Trump’s demands. Angry enemies and former friends who see new legal vulnerability. And ongoing lawsuits and potential charges stemming from the deadly MAGA riot in the Capitol.
Following the swift acquittal last week in the second impeachment trial of the former Trump president, Trump, his advisers and his lawyers spent part of the long weekend celebrating his isolation from yet another legal hassle.
But with the Senate trial in mind, Trump now faces a slew of other legal dramas during his immediate post-presidency. No longer protected by the Oval Office’s substantial legal protections, Trump has privately complained that his enemies will investigate or “sue me for the rest of my life,” said a person who has discussed the matter with him in the past. several weeks.
The new lawsuits mainly related to his attempts to reverse the election results seem to be increasing every week.
On Tuesday, a new federal lawsuit was filed by the NAACP on behalf of Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi. The lawsuit, which was also filed against Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, alleges that both men and the two groups violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 when they attempted to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 victory to stop.
The lawsuit alleges that Trump and Giuliani violated the Ku Klux Klan Act, passed in 1871 in response to KKK violence and intimidation, which prevented members of Congress in the South from performing their constitutional duties during the reconstruction. said a press release announcing the aforementioned lawsuit. “The statute was specifically designed to protect against conspiracies.”
Multiple of Trump and Giuliani’s advisers have not responded to questions about which attorneys would handle this federal lawsuit for their respective clients – although Michael van der Veen, one of Trump’s attorneys in this month’s Senate trial, and Alan Dershowitz, the famed attorney who joined Trump’s legal defense for the first impeachment trial, both told The Daily Beast that as of Tuesday they had not been approached by the Trump job on these matters.
The federal lawsuit comes just as attorneys working in the DC Attorney General’s office were still debating whether to sue the former president for violating local law when he allegedly sparked the riot , according to CNN.
While the riot was the culmination of Trump’s months-long attempts to reverse the 2020 election, it isn’t the only chapter in Trump and his allies’ efforts that the ex-president may have legally exposed.
On February 10, Georgia prosecutors began a criminal investigation into Trump’s teleconference conference in early January (ahead of the riot) in which the then president pressured state officials to “ find ” the necessary votes to undo Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. to make. that’s in place. The phone call was just one facet, secretly taped, of Trump and prominent Republicans’ months-long legal and messaging crusade to throw out Biden’s clear and legitimate victories in several crucial states. Trump’s failed mission became increasingly authoritarian as the presidential transition progressed, but virtually all legal challenges were thrown out or laughed at, including by Trump-appointed judges. The Georgia secretary of state has also opened his own separate investigation into the now infamous appeal, characterizing the investigation as “ fact-finding and administrative. ”
“The timing here is no coincidence [the] impeachment lawsuit, ” Jason Miller, Trump’s senior adviser, said in a brief statement to The Daily Beast, referring to the Georgia criminal investigation. “This is just the Democrats’ latest attempt to score political points by continuing their witch hunt against President Trump, and everyone is seeing through it.”
But the legal exposure could extend beyond political affiliation, as the voting tech companies that smeared Trump and top allies baselessly as part of a fictional conspiracy to manipulate or hack the election and tip it to Biden have already sent numerous legal threats. to individuals close to the former president.
Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems have already filed massive lawsuits against Giuliani, former Trump attorney Sidney Powell and others. Giuliani, who has served as Trump’s personal attorney, and Powell brought forward these fictional conspiracy claims on behalf of Trump, who himself brought up such false accusations on Twitter and elsewhere. For example, those working on Team Dominion have said that they still look hard at others involved in targeting the company unfounded – and that group of people included, perhaps in the first place, the 45th President of the United States. “Our legal team, frankly, looks at everyone, and we don’t exclude anyone,” John Poulos, Dominion’s CEO, said in an interview with CNN in late January.
The upcoming lawsuits against Trump in his post-presidency could also get personal. Two days before Trump left office last month, MSNBC presenter Joe Scarborough publicly stated that he was still working on a possible lawsuit against Trump, who had promoted – several times – the evidence-free defamation that Scarborough is during his time in the White House. a murderer.
According to a knowledgeable person, Scarborough has recently told people that he is still considering a lawsuit against the former president, but that he has not yet made a final decision, and likely will not in the coming months. However, the MSNBC host has also said that if a pile of civil lawsuits are brought against Trump in the coming months, particularly for his role in starting the January 6 riot, it would likely play a role in his calculation to not to worry about filing his own lawsuit.
In recent months, this expert source added, Scarborough has discussed a possible lawsuit against Trump with Washington, DC attorney Elizabeth “Libby” Locke of well-known firm Clare Locke.
In the weeks after Biden was sworn in, Trump had hit remarkably low in public and media appearances. Many of the former president’s allies thought this was for the best and had advised Trump to continue doing so for the time being, especially when a deluge of lawsuits are filed. A source close to the ex-president said they were “happy [Trump’s] no longer on Twitter, ” because if he was, his post-presidency anger tweets could “ inevitably ” strengthen potential lawsuits against him, particularly defamation.
But after the death of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday, Trump couldn’t do anything about it. He called Fox News to talk about Limbaugh’s life and their friendship – and eventually tried to talk about himself and the lie that he won the 2020 election. Shortly after, it was announced that Trump would appear Hannity, Newsmax TV and OAN, all also on Wednesdays.
A person familiar with the case said Trump was recently reminded not to mention Dominion or Smartmatic during new interviews, fearing it could be used against him if either company decides to also go after him in lawsuits. for slander.
However, not all of the former president’s trial challenges are new. Others have sat asleep, waiting for him to return to civilian life.
His new status has also shaken up prosecutors in New York, according to The Wall Street Journal, are now investigating loans Trump has taken out for several buildings, including the staple of his sprawling family business: Trump Tower in Manhattan. The Trump organization and the former president are still struggling to address the hundreds of millions of dollars in estimated debt it has incurred, with maturity dates for those loans due to arrive in a few years.
In New York, both the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and Attorney General Letitia James are investigating whether the Trump Organization has committed tax and insurance fraud by lying about the value of assets. The investigations led to a separate lawsuit over Attorney Cyrus Vance’s attempts to subpoena Trump’s tax return. The case is still pending in the Supreme Court, but Vance has reportedly already obtained much of the proceeds in other ways, according to Bloomberg.
The power of the incumbent also gave former President Trump the ability to evade the negative consequences of his alleged history of sexual assault and harassment. Another source close to Trump says the ex-president occasionally continues to complain about the Me Too movement, which he blames as one of the more destructive moves to gain national traction during his only term in the White House.
A lawsuit filed by former journalist E. Jean Carroll alleging that Trump defamed her by calling her a liar – after accusing Trump of raping her in a New York department store in the 1990s – is still pending. . Under Attorney General Bill Barr, the Justice Department tried to remove the case from state court and bring it to federal court, where the department’s attorneys would hear the case on Trump’s behalf.
Further, throughout the Trump administration, Summer Zervos, once a contestant on Trump’s now-defunct NBC reality TV show The intern, had tried to impeach Trump in a defamation lawsuit. Towards the end of the 2016 presidential election, Zervos publicly accused the then Republican candidate of sexually assaulting her, grabbing her breasts and[ing]His “genitals” to her. While in office, the White House’s official position was that the many women on the list to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct or assault were simply lying.
Early last year, a court in New York stopped the lawsuit, postponing any possible impeachment of the then incumbent president of the United States. But last week, Zervos and her attorney formally asked a judge to allow her to continue her lawsuit, as he can no longer claim protection from the highest office in the country whose lawyers had long opposed this impeachment. protected.
[The] The defendant is now no longer president. As a result, the defendant’s appeal is moot, ”argued Zervos’s lawyer in the new application.