let's talk about Donald Trump and his legal troubles this is the mug shot of the 45th president of the United States the drip drip drip of being Donald Trump found liable or responsible by judges and juries it's a Witch Hunt and we're not going to take it it's the first time a US president has been criminally charged let alone one who's running for the top job again this is entirely new for our country it is extra remarkable in a sense to think that the one individual who bring that historical Trend could also then be reelected
so what exactly are all of these cases about could Trump actually go to prison and how could all of this affect his presidential [Music] campaign okay let's start by laying out the cases Trump is facing because it can be hard to keep track of everything there are six cases two civil and for criminal and any of the criminal cases could send him to prison in theory now two of those are federal cases brought by the US justice department the January 6 case and the classified documents case the other two are brought by individual states the
hush money case in New York and the election interference case in Georgia keep in mind Trump denies all the charges against him then there are the two civil cases the egene Carol defamation case and the New York fraud case they've already gone to court and Trump was found liable in both he's been ordered to pay Financial penalties that add up to more than half a billion dollars but he's appealing both judgments so the cases haven't wrapped up yet now a major factor in all of this is timing because the presidential election is on November 5th
and unless there's a major twist it'll be a rerun of 2020 Donald Trump for the Republicans against Joe Biden for the Democrats and right now the race is looking really tight so the countdown to election date is on and Trump and his lawyers appear to be doing whatever they can to slow down the criminal cases he wanted to prevent as many of these cases from going to trial before November as possible um both for legal reasons and also for political reasons a lot of people who are Republicans over the past year have scratched their heads
and wondered out loud why all these indictments raining down on the former president why now and the simple answer to that is that Justice takes time the process of justice is not moving as quickly as the election calendar definitely is now out of all the four criminal cases the hush money case is the only one with a realistic chance of reaching a verdict before the election the trial started in April and it's happening in New York Donald Trump seated just 10 ft away as the woman at the center of his hush money coverup trial Stormy
Daniels testified in Vivid detail about their alleged sexual encounter nearly two decades ago it was not a good morning for Mr Trump when Michael Cohen took the witness stamp we are on the cusp of a historic verdict from a group of 12 New Yorkers this case centers on a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump trump denies the affair but the story threatened to come out in 2016 while he was running for president the first time around the payment was made by his lawyer at the
Time Michael Cohen and Trump reimbursed him later but the way Trump reimbursed him and recorded the payments is the issue technically it's not illegal uh in America to uh pay somebody a a a payment in order that they not disclose something just because they had an affair what is the alleged criminal charge there is that Mr Trump allegedly channeled those payments through his attorney Michael Cohen and then claimed the p payments as legitimate business expenses thereby in effect fraudulently recording the business records New York prosecutors charged him with 34 counts of falsifying business records to
conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election the maximum penalty for each of those counts is 4 years in prison many people myself included are skeptical or are question whether he would actually be sentenced to any term of impr presentment given the somewhat unusual and novel nature of the facts and the legal theories and also because he's a former president the politics surrounding that but that's not a foregone conclusion right so let's just say Trump does get a jail term what then now he would probably appeal and
that would drag things out but if that failed and he was sent to jail before November he could still become president while many former felons um or individuals convicted of felonies are not allowed to vote in many states in the election process there's no prohibition on serving as president even if you're convicted of a felony okay let's look at the classified documents case next Trump's accused of mishandling hundreds of classified government documents after he left office taking them to his maralago mansion in Florida and obstructing efforts to get them back we're talking about top secret
information like the military capabilities of foreign countries Trump faces 40 counts in total the most serious charges carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison in many respects the documents case could have been the most open and shut most persuasive case um there's certainly more physical evidence in that case than there is in any other case but the trial's been postponed it was initially scheduled to start in may but now it looks very unlikely to start before November's election ction people are giving different reasons for the delay like the fact that any case
involving classified documents is going to be complicated but others suggest there's something else going on the judge in this case Eileen cannan was appointed by Trump when he was president and some suggest she could be deliberately stalling because there's some kind of loyalty at play Mr Trump drew a very favorable straw in um the judge in the case and the judge has a lot of discretion at the trial level in terms of timing I think this case was already always going to take a while because the processes for a criminal prosecution involving classified documents are
very elaborate it's it's fair for other people to look at this situation and say I suspect something more nefarious I just personally am not there the other big federal case is about the 2020 presidential election when Trump lost to Biden and refused to accept the result we know there was massive fraud this is known as the January 6th case prosecutors say that Trump essentially staged to campaign to overturn the election results they've charged him with four counts those counts are based on accusations that Trump did things like deliberately lie about election fraud that he pressured
his vice president Mike Pence to disrupt the certification of results on January 6th which was happening in Congress and then encouraged his supporters to storm the capital building we will stop the steel we're going to walk down and I'll be there with you we're going to walk down to the capital chars the cap it take it back let's go the world watching what America look like today an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy that one I think is the case that most Americans take most seriously but right now the case is essentially on
hold Trump is arguing that he should have total immunity from prosecution because he was president at the time everything happened if a president of the United States does not have immunity he'll be totally ineffective because he won't be able to do anything because it will mean he'll be prosecuted strongly prosecuted perhaps uh as soon as he leaves office by his by the opposing party the Supreme Court is now deciding on that question which could take a while and it seems unlikely to succeed on the merits even with a very very favorably inclined uh Supreme Court
favorably inclined towards Mr Trump generally but he's already obtained a very significant victory in delaying the proceedings by having this issue go all the way up to the Supreme Court that brings us back to the timing issue and the legal and political implications of all these delays because if Trump wins the election in November and becomes president again that could change everything with the federal cases so that's the January 6 case and the classified documents one as president Trump could make them go away because he in a sense um heads up the justice department and
he would have the power to appoint an attorney general who would then shut them down there's also another potential scenario if either of those Federal cases do end up going to trial before the election and Trump is convicted as president he could pardon himself the president has the P the power to Pardon offenses in the United States but only for federal offenses with the state cases it's less clear what might happen if Trump became president but we'll come back to that because we've got one more case to tell you about the Georgia election interference case
this one is also about the 2020 election and allegations that Trump and 18 other people tried to mess with the results in Georgia prosecutors say they refused to accept that Trump lost and knowingly and willfully joined conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of trump a key evidence is a recorded phone call where Trump is heard asking a republican official to find more votes after Biden won with a margin of 11,779 votes I just want to find uh 11,780 votes which is one more than we have because we won the state
and flipping the state is a great Testament to our country cuz you know and there's there's there's just it's a testament that they can admit to a mistake or whatever you want to call it if it was a mistake I don't know Mr President um you have people that submit information and we have our people that submit information and then it comes before the court and the court then has to make a determination we have to stand by our numbers we believe our numbers are right why do you say that though Mr President the problem
now the Georgia case has got totally bogged down for a bunch of reasons to start with it's huge in scope plus there are so many defendants that one was never going to go to trial this year there's also been controversy around the district attorney who's bringing the case Fanny Willis because the special prosecutor she appointed was someone she was involved with romantically Nathan Wade the special prosecutor in the Georgia election interference case has just resigned so let's get back to the question of what might happen to the state cases if Trump is reelected so we're
talking about this Georgia one and the hush money one well Trump wouldn't have the same legal power to stop the state cases as he would for the federal cases but being in the White House would still help Mr Trump would certainly have levers that he could try in and pull but it would be harder and more um complicated for him to and certainly legally there aren't clear mechanisms for him to shut those down it is inconceivable to me that a duly elected president even if he had been tried and convicted by a local prosecutor before
his election it would somehow be appropriate for him to serve any period of his time in office in prison so that's the legal side on the political side the big question is how all of this legal trouble is affecting Donald Trump's campaign and is Bid to return to office it's hard to say for sure because there are signs that it's both helping him and hurting him each time he's been indicted in successive cases he's gotten a bit of a bump of support it has at least with his base of supporters reinforced and kind of doubled
down the enthusiasm and the passion that that his supporters have for him the make America great again faction of the Republican party it is the loudest most extreme faction that takes up all the oxygen of the the buru but they are very much a minority when you look at the American electorate RIT large the most important voter right now for this election is the independently minded voter in a swing state and if we look at the one case where things are really moving the New York hush money trial a recent poll by Politico shows that
the case does seem to be having an impact on Trump's support Beyond his base people are following the CL and they are interested in the outcome and if Trump were to be convicted um significant numbers of people including uh some Republicans and uh a sizable chunk of Independents say that they would be less likely to support Trump uh in November now that doesn't mean that they will definitely not support Trump right because there are a lot of other issues that are going to be highly relevant in this campaign I think it will be one more
piece of information in a very complicated stew this year that could sway some people so what we've got here is this web of legal and political scenarios that could play out in so many different ways but winning back the White House would probably be Trump's best defense of all and that'll be for American voters to decide start here is all about explaining Topics in the news check out our recent explainer on the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine and our full playlist of episodes is here [Music]
