ATLANTA — As Donald Trump prepares for a potential indictment in the Fulton County election investigation probe spearheaded by district attorney Fani Willis, the former president is surrounded with other legal troubles outside of Georgia.
The 45th president has been indicted three times, had his organization fined over $1 million for tax fraud, was sued by the New York attorney general among even more legal trouble the former commander and chief is facing.
Here is a full breakdown of his legal trouble outside of the state of Georgia:
Mar-a-Lago classified documents probe
The federal indictment against Donald Trump accuses the former president of illegally hoarding classified documents at his Florida estate after leaving the White House in 2021, and then scheming and lying to thwart government efforts to recover them.
Justice Department prosecutors brought 37 felony counts against Trump in the indictment, relying upon photographs from Mar-a-Lago, surveillance video, text messages between staffers, Trump’s own words, those of his lawyers, and other evidence.
Trump faces 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act. Other charges include: conspiracy to obstruct justice; corruptly concealing a document or record; concealing a document in a federal investigation; and making false statements.
Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 37 federal felony counts accusing him of illegally hoarding classified records at his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate and rejecting government demands to give them back.
A judge in that case heard arguments over whether that trial — which would take place in Florida — should happen before or after the 2024 election. While prosecutors are seeking a December trial date, Trump's lawyers have pushed for an indefinite delay, arguing he can't get a fair trial while he's campaigning for president.
New charges — and a new defendant — added to the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump underscore how the Mar-a-Lago investigation is still very much ongoing, even as the focus has been on an expected indictment in a separate case related to the 2020 election.
In an updated indictment handed down, prosecutors allege that Trump asked a staffer to delete camera footage at his Florida estate in an effort to obstruct the federal investigation into his possession of classified documents.
The indictment includes new counts of obstruction and willful retention of national defense information. Prosecutors also added a third defendant to the case: Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, who they say schemed with Trump and his valet, Walt Nauta, to conceal the footage from investigators.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and a spokesperson dismissed the new charges as “nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt” by the Biden administration “to harass President Trump and those around him” and to influence the 2024 presidential race.
Trump indicted for efforts to overturn 2020 election in Washington D.C.
Donald Trump was indicted on felony charges Tuesday for working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol, with the Justice Department acting to hold him accountable for an unprecedented effort to block the peaceful transfer of presidential power and threaten American democracy.
The four-count indictment, the third criminal case against Trump, provided deeper insight into a dark moment that has already been the subject of exhaustive federal investigations and captivating public hearings. It chronicles a months-long campaign of lies about the election results and says that, even when those falsehoods resulted in a chaotic insurrection at the Capitol, Trump sought to exploit the violence by pointing to it as a reason to further delay the counting of votes that sealed his defeat.
“The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” said Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, whose office has spent months investigating Trump. “It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”
The Trump campaign called the charges “fake” and asked why it took two-and-a-half years to bring them.
Trump was the only person charged in Tuesday’s indictment. But prosecutors obliquely referenced a half-dozen co-conspirators, including lawyers inside and outside of government who they said had worked with Trump to undo the election results. They also advanced legally dubious schemes to enlist slates of fake electors in battleground states won by Democrat Joe Biden to falsely claim that Trump had actually won them.
The indictment accuses the defeated president and his allies of trying to “exploit the violence and chaos” by calling lawmakers into the evening on Jan. 6 to delay the certification of Biden’s victory.
Manhattan DA's indictment over hush-money settlement to Stormy Daniels
In New York state court, a trial is scheduled to begin in March — in the thick of primary season — in another Trump case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg that alleges a scheme to bury allegations of extramarital affairs that arose during his first White House campaign.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case to 34 felony counts of falsifying internal business records at his private company about a hush-money payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels. Trump was trying to get the case moved to federal court, but a judge ruled against that on Wednesday.
Trump Organization fined $1.6 million for tax fraud
Donald Trump’s company was fined $1.6 million Friday for a scheme in which the former president’s top executives dodged personal income taxes on lavish job perks — a symbolic, hardly crippling blow for an enterprise boasting billions of dollars in assets.
A fine was the only penalty a judge could impose on the Trump Organization after its conviction last month for 17 tax crimes, including conspiracy and falsifying business records. The amount was the maximum allowed by law. Judge Juan Manuel Merchan gave the company 14 days to pay. A person convicted of the same crimes would’ve faced years in prison.
Trump himself was not on trial and denied any knowledge that a small group of executives were evading taxes on extras including rent-free apartments, luxury cars and private school tuition. Prosecutors said such items were part of what they dubbed the Trump Organization’s “deluxe executive compensation package.”
The company denied wrongdoing and said it would appeal.
Civil filing by New York attorney general against Trump family and organization
Former President Donald Trump padded his net worth by billions of dollars and habitually misled banks and others about the value of prized assets like golf courses, hotels and his Mar-a-Lago estate, New York’s attorney general said in a lawsuit that seeks to permanently disrupt the Republican’s ability to do business in the state.
Attorney General Letitia James dubbed it “The art of the steal.”
The lawsuit, filed in state court in Manhattan, is the culmination of the Democrat’s three-year civil investigation into Trump and the Trump Organization. Trump’s three eldest children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump, were also named as defendants, along with two longtime company executives.
In its 222 pages, the suit struck at the core of what made Trump famous, taking a blacklight to the image of wealth and opulence he’s embraced throughout his career — first as a real estate developer, then as a reality TV host on “The Apprentice” and later as president.
Jan. 6 'incitement' lawsuits
The team led by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November, has questioned a host of former White House officials, Trump allies, lawyers and state election officials both in voluntary interviews and before the grand jury that has been meeting behind closed doors in Washington.
Those who have testified before the grand jury — which would ultimately hand down any indictment — include Trump's Vice President Mike Pence, who has spoken extensively in public about the former president's efforts to pressure him into rejecting President Joe Biden's electoral victory.
Smith's team appears to be interested in a late night Dec. 18, 2020, White House meeting one aide has called “unhinged” in which Trump's private lawyers suggested he order the U.S. military to seize state voting machines in an unprecedented effort to pursue his false claims of voter fraud. In videos shown by the U.S. House Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack, one White House lawyer said he thought the idea was “nuts.” Judges — including some appointed by Trump — uniformly rejected his claims of voter fraud.
Smith has also questioned witnesses about schemes by Trump associates to enlist electors in battleground states to sign certificates claiming that Trump — instead of Biden — had won their states. The fake electors' certificates were mailed to the National Archives and Congress, where some Republicans used them to try to justify delaying or blocking certification of the election.
Smith's team has also shown interest in the story of a Georgia election worker, Ruby Freeman, who along with her daughter has recounted living in fear following death threats after Trump and his allies falsely accused them of pulling fraudulent ballots from a suitcase in Georgia. That interest is according to a person familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal probe.