As Donald Trump prepares to turn himself in over alleged hush money payments, the former president is the focus of other state and federal investigations which pose even more serious legal risks.
Trump’s next set of legal problems could arrive in the state of Georgia, where Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, is weighing potential charges in relation to alleged interference by the ex-president and others in the 2020 US presidential election.
Willis earlier this year said her decision on whether to bring indictments stemming from a special grand jury investigation was “imminent”.
The Georgia probe, as well as a US Department of Justice investigation into Trump’s alleged meddling in the 2020 election, are seen as the most serious legal threats to the ex-president. The DoJ is also probing his handling of government documents. Trump has denied wrongdoing in these cases.
“The Georgia and DoJ cases expose Trump to potentially far more prison time than the Manhattan case, where prison time seems unlikely,” said Barbara McQuade, professor at University of Michigan’s law school and a former US attorney. “A conviction for election fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, Rico [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations] or seditious conspiracy could bring substantial prison time”.
The Manhattan district attorney’s sealed indictment, which is expected to address a hush payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels, should not affect the timing of other probes, experts say.
But the standard claim by prosecutors that cases are brought only when ready “is a little disingenuous”, said Daniel Richman, former federal prosecutor and professor at Columbia Law School. “In general, awareness of how a prosecution is going to affect the national scene is at the very least going to pop up from time to time when prosecutors think about a case.”
Of the two probes linked to the 2020 election, a potential indictment would probably materialise in Georgia first as its investigation may be viewed as a “subset” of the DoJ probe, according to Andrew Weissmann, who was a lead prosecutor during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation while Trump was in office.
The Georgia probe and the DoJ documents investigation “both appear to be substantially done,” he added.
Willis’s next move in Georgia is much anticipated. Seen as a tough litigator, she ousted a longtime incumbent in the Fulton county district attorney elections in 2020 after serving as prosecutor for 19 years, during which she led more than 100 jury trials.
In its first report, the special grand jury last month said some witnesses may have lied under oath and recommended indictments be sought by the district attorney.
Trump then filed a motion to quash the partially unsealed report, claiming that statutes authorising the use of such a jury were “unconstitutional”. He also sought to disqualify the Fulton county district attorney’s office “from any further involvement in this matter” in part due to media interviews by Willis that he claimed “violated prosecutorial standards”.
Clark Cunningham, law professor at Georgia State University, argued Willis may decide to file a potential indictment before May 1, the deadline for her to address Trump’s request, to avoid delays. If this motion is denied, Trump could trigger a drawn-out appeals process that would put proceedings on hold, a strategy his lawyers have deployed in other cases.
Analysts argue a potential indictment by Willis would focus on election fraud and may include racketeering charges often associated with mob prosecutions, based on her use of the Georgia Rico statute in other high-profile trials.
Rico would act as an umbrella for the string of alleged crimes associated with Trump and others. This may include allegations that the ex-president pressured Georgia’s top election official to change the state’s vote count, and that Republican lawmakers in that state signed false declarations claiming Trump had won the 2020 polls and designated themselves as electors.
“Think of [Rico] as a jigsaw puzzle,” said Cunningham. “Any particular piece by itself, it might not be obvious what the criminal implications of that are. But if you put all the pieces together, a picture emerges”.
Violations of Georgia’s Rico laws carry a penalty of between five and 20 years in prison. Unlike in federal proceedings, defendants convicted in state courts may start serving jail time while appeals are pending.
Some experts argue that despite the gravity of allegations against Trump, he may never see a prison cell because of his defence strategies and status as former president.
But to others, that would not be the sole gauge of prosecutors’ success.
“The most important thing is to reassert the rule of law,” said Cunningham.
Given the deep partisan fissures in the US, having what is perceived as a “thorough and impartial process for evaluating what happened in relation to the 2020 election [would be] historically important”.