Not Even Election Win Can Save Trump From These Legal Battles

Donald Trump’s criminal cases may be behind him, but that doesn’t mean his legal woes are over.

The president-elect is still on the hook for eight civil cases relating to his involvement in the January 6 attack. The cases, which come from congressmembers and injured police officers, could be the last bastion in holding Trump to account for failing to intervene as his supporters ransacked the U.S. Capitol.

“These cases, unlike the criminal case, will not be affected by the election,” Joseph Sellers, a lawyer representing 10 current and former Democratic House members suing Trump and the far-right groups that led the January 6 riot, told Politico. “Our clients suffered real injuries that entitle them to relief, but also I think are seeking some measure of accountability given President Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 events and the events leading up to it.”

The criminal cases against Trump died overnight after the MAGA leader won the presidential election, effectively allowing him to skirt all responsibility by resuming an office that cannot be criminally prosecuted. Trump faced 91 criminal charges across four cases that prosecutors waited years to take to court. Separately, he was convicted on 34 criminal counts relating to covert hush-money payments made to porn actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election—but that sentencing dissolved just days after Trump won the election.

Some of those near-election trial delays were thanks to a game-changing Supreme Court decision in July, in which the nation’s highest court ruled 6–3 to expand a president’s immunity and redefine what constitutes an “official act,” nearly allowing Trump to get off scot-free.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor feared for the future of a country that legally permits the executive branch authority to commit crimes under the cloak of the office, arguing that the court’s decision made a “mockery” of the constitutional principle that “no man is above the law.” She warned that the court’s “own misguided wisdom” gave Trump “all the immunity he asked for and more.”

The Supreme Court has once again declined to remove the gag order placed on President-elect Donald Trump in his hush-money case. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito rejected the request on the court’s behalf on Monday.

“The application for stay addressed to Justice Alito and referred to the Court is denied,” the orders list read, with no additional comments or explanation.

Trump was found guilty in New York on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records regarding hush-money payments he made during his first campaign in 2016 to adult film actor Stormy Daniels, with whom he had an affair.

New York Judge Juan Merchan imposed a gag order at the start of Trump’s trial that banned him from talking about witnesses, jury members, and courtroom staff during the trial. Trump nonetheless violated the order countless times and was fined $9,000 for doing so. He is still fighting to get the felony convictions overturned, claiming his guilty verdict would lead to “disruptions to the institution of the Presidency.” Merchan has so far refused to toss out the case entirely, instead indefinitely delaying sentencing.

The vast majority of Americans don’t agree with Donald Trump’s priorities for his first days in office—particularly his recently advertised plan to mass-pardon his supporters who ransacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

A November Scripps News/Ipsos survey found that few Americans—just 30 percent—actually support a legal reprieve for the rioters, versus an overwhelming 64 percent of the country that is against it. Just 1 percent of respondents believed that the pardons should be Trump’s first priority.

Another poll found that the majority of Americans associated negative words with the MAGA protest. Approximately 53 percent described the events of the day as an “insurrection,” whereas 33 percent of surveyed respondents likened the actions of Trump’s supporters on January 6 to “patriotism,” according to a CBS News/YouGov poll from January 2024.

Trump has long promised that he would free the men and women who rioted through Congress in 2021, forcing the legislature to delay the certification of the presidential election results. In an interview with NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday, the MAGA leader said he would act “very quickly” to release the January 6 defendants—as soon as his “first day” in office.

“They’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open,” Trump said.

Several January 6 defendants have attempted to throw their cases out in light of special counsel Jack Smith’s stalled January 6 case against Trump, noting inconsistencies in the legal system’s handling of Trump’s case compared to his followers.

Other Trump supporters who participated in the riot have tried to delay their sentencing until after Trump takes office, assuming that the president-elect will make good on his promises to free some of his most violent and ardent supporters.

Lara Trump seems to be going all in in her quest for the Florida Senate seat being vacated by secretary of state nominee Marco Rubio.

Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law resigned from her position as co-chair of the Republican National Committee Sunday, fueling speculation that she is in line for the post. If Rubio is confirmed, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would be in charge of appointing a replacement to fill the rest of Rubio’s term, which ends in 2026.

“It is something I would seriously consider,” Lara Trump told the Associated Press. “If I’m being completely transparent, I don’t know exactly what that would look like. And I certainly want to get all of the information possible if that is something that’s real for me. But yeah, I would 100% consider it.”

Trump was appointed as co-chair of the RNC in March in a sign of the president-elect’s full takeover of the GOP. During her tenure, her father-in-law won the presidential election and the popular vote and Republicans also managed to win both the Senate and the House.

Her bid for the Florida Senate seat has received backing from MAGA personalities as well as the Republican base. For example, Maye Musk, the mother of billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, posted her support for the president-elect’s daughter on X last month, and her son also posted, “Lara Trump is genuinely great.” Trump returned the favor, praising Musk’s so-called plan to improve government efficiency along with fellow Republican executive Vivek Ramaswamy.

“I really don’t think we’ve seen movement like this in our federal government since our country’s founding in many ways,” Trump said. “And I think if they are successful in what they plan to do, I think it is going to be transformative to America in a great way.”

DeSantis will be under a lot of pressure to appoint a member of the Trump family to the Senate seat, especially after the endorsement from the world’s richest man. Musk spent over $250 million on the election in order to get Donald Trump reelected and now wields tremendous influence in the Republican Party. DeSantis has bigger ambitions than governor of Florida and knows that keeping Musk and the president-elect happy can only help his prospects.

Trump is very OK with deporting U.S. citizens to achieve his grim vision for America.

The president-elect sat for a testy, nearly hour-long interview with Meet the Press’s Kristen Welker, in which he doubled down on some of the cruelest parts of his “Day 1” platform.

“I don’t want to be breaking up families. So the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back,” Trump said.

“Even kids who are here legally?” Welker asked.

“We have to have rules and regulations. You can always find something out like, you know, ‘This doesn’t work. That doesn’t work,’” Trump continued. “I’ll tell you what’s going to be horrible, when we take a wonderful young woman who’s with a criminal. And they show the woman … being taken out. Or they want her out and your cameras are focused on her as she’s crying as she’s being taken out of our country. And then the public turns against us. But we have to do our job. And you have to have a series of standards and a series of laws. And in the end, look, our country is a mess.”

The president-elect calmly acknowledged how evil, damaging, and unpopular the policy would be to American families. But he seems to think that deporting entire families, rather than separating them at the border like he did in his first term, will be more palatable. Regardless of how he tries to do it, the “largest deportation operation in American history” is likely to be a painful mess, especially given that he wants to send deportees back to random countries. The president-elect also wants to end one of the most basic tenets of the constitution—birthright citizenship.

Donald Trump still can’t promise positive dividends for Americans as a result of his “concepts” of an economic plan.

The president-elect dodged a direct question regarding his tariff plan during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, refusing to acknowledge that his intent to impose massive tariffs on three of the United States’ biggest trading partners would ultimately hurt American wallets.

“Economists of all stripes say that ultimately, consumers pay the price of tariffs. Can you guarantee American families won’t pay more?” asked NBC’s Kristen Welker.

“I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow. But I can say that if you look at my—just pre-Covid, we had the greatest economy in the history of our country—and I had a lot of tariffs on a lot of different countries, but in particular China,” Trump said.

He then boasted that he had effectively created the post-Covid boom, which saw the American economy returning to life (thanks to President Joe Biden’s efforts) after almost completely stagnating due to the global pandemic.

Trump then falsely claimed that Mexico and Canada’s trade deficits with the United States were “subsidies,” rather than indicators that America’s neighbors are purchasing more of its goods than they’re selling in return. In 2023, that differential—or deficit—was nearly $41 billion with Canada and $162 billion with Mexico, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Trump also vastly overinflated the reality of the deficits, wrongly asserting that the U.S. is “subsidizing” its neighbors to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars each.

The solution to that fake problem, according to Trump, is to turn Mexico and Canada into states.

“If we’re going to subsidize them, let them become a state. We’re subsidizing Mexico, and we’re subsidizing Canada, and we’re subsidizing many countries all over the world,” Trump said. “And all I want to do is I want to have a level, fast, but fair playing field.”

Trump has promised to tackle inflation by imposing extreme tax cuts and tariffs on countries around the world. The MAGA leader has floated several tariff ideas—including one impossibly high hike between 200 and 2,000 percent on imported Chinese goods.

Businesses across the country have balked at his numbers, with CEOs arguing that it will be Americans, not foreign countries, who pay the price.

Readying themselves for a second Trump administration, companies whose business models rely on foreign suppliers—from the auto industry to some of the nation’s most popular clothing lines—are already planning to introduce price hikes on their products.

“We’re set to raise prices,” Timothy Boyle, chief executive of Columbia Sportswear, told The Washington Post in October. “We’re buying stuff today for delivery next fall. So we’re just going to deal with it and we’ll just raise the prices.… It’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans.”

Trump has also proposed a more modest 20–60 plan, in which his second term would impose a 20 percent worldwide tariff alongside a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods. But even that plan would prove devastating for the economy, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, which found that it would lower household incomes by an average of $3,000 in 2025.

In a joint letter released before the election, nearly two dozen Nobel Prize-winning economists formally warned against Trump’s economic plan, arguing that the MAGA leader’s stiff tariff increases and tax cuts would spell disaster for the average American.

Donald Trump has just rewarded his lawyer Alina Habba with a plum job in his new administration: counselor to the president. 

The president-elect made the announcement Sunday on his Truth Social account, calling her “a tireless advocate for Justice, a fierce Defender of the Rule of Law, and an invaluable Advisor to my Campaign and Transition Team.”

There was speculation that Habba would be chosen as Trump’s press secretary, but ultimately Trump decided to go with his campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Habba has built a reputation going beyond Trump’s lawyer as one of his foremost defenders in the press, even backing him up when he spread conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene. 

Well before that, Habba was speaking to the press during Trump’s hush-money trial earlier this year, offering defenses for Trump’s falling asleep in court as well as his penchant for holding press clippings. In many cases, though, she misspoke in court and actually seemed to hurt Trump’s case, even getting basic legal terms like “due process” wrong.  

Habba’s skill as a lawyer is questionable at best. Representing the president-elect in a defamation lawsuit from writer E. Jean Carroll, Habba’s opening statement seemed to undermine Trump’s case from the start. During the trial itself, Habba was reprimanded by the judge on multiple occasions. 

Habba had a hush-money scandal of her own involving a former employee at Trump’s New Jersey golf club, which she ultimately escaped thanks to a court settlement. Now, as she moves into the White House, Habba will have to brush up on her legal skills, or hope that Trump makes her an unofficial spokesperson, otherwise she’s going to have a rough time.

Trump wants anyone involved with the House January 6 investigation committee in jail ASAP.

In an interview aired Sunday on Meet the Press—Trump’s first since his election night win—the president-elect laid out the framework for his draconian vision, starting with his revenge list.

“I think those people committed a major crime, and [Liz] Cheney was behind it,” he said of the House select committee tasked with investigating January 6. “And so was Benny Thompson. Everybody on that committee.… For what they did, yeah, honestly, they should go to jail.”

The committee, run by the aforementioned Cheney and Thompson, as well as six other Democrats and another Republican, was shut down when Republicans won the House back in 2023.  

The committee accurately deduced that Trump did indeed incite acts of violence during his attempt to hold onto the office after his 2020 defeat, which he refuses to acknowledge to this day. He also accused the committee of deleting and destroying evidence regarding January 6, a claim with no evidence. 

Cheney responded to Trump’s threat in a statement to The Washington Post. “Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power. He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building, and halted the official counting of electoral votes,” she said. “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

Former Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, the other Republican on the committee, also fired back at the president-elect. “If Donald wants to pursue this vindictive fantasy, I say bring it on,” he stated on his Substack. “I’m not intimidated by a man whose actions on January 6th showed a cowardly disregard for democracy and the rule of law.”

In the Meet the Press interview, Trump went on to express distaste for special counsel Jack Smith, who was heading the investigation into January 6, saying that he would let attorney general nominee Pam Bondi “do what she wants to do” to Smith. 

Trump used the entire election cycle to fill out his “prosecute and imprison” list, and is so deep in his lies about January 6 that he’s convinced himself of his own victimhood. It’s us who are the problem, not him. When asked if he would finally concede the 2020 election now that the dust has settled and he’s won again, Trump replied, “No, why would I do that?” 

Various outlets have reported that President Biden has put preemptive pardons on the table for anyone who might be on one of Trump’s lists.

Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to take over the FBI, has put together an enemies list composed of members of the so-called “deep state.” But he may have already ruined his own plans to prosecute any of those people.

Paul Rosenzweig, the former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, thinks that Patel has doomed his revenge plot by openly discussing it, he wrote in The Bulwark Friday.

Rosenzweig explains that if accused criminals can prove that their prosecution is vindictive, they have grounds to rebut the charges. Usually, that’s very hard for defendants to prove, but Patel’s many interviews and the long enemies list in his book Government Gangsters provide that proof.

“If Kash Patel becomes director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as President Trump has suggested he should, he will be the poster child of vindictiveness—and his infamous public declarations of retribution may lead to the dismissal of any politically motivated prosecutions he initiates against his enemies list of ‘Deep State’ opponents,” Rosenzweig writes.

Even if Patel has actual credible evidence against any of the people on that list, he has preemptively hurt those efforts, according to Rosenzweig.

“A defendant can still succeed if he or she can present direct evidence showing that the prosecution was intended as retribution, notwithstanding the fact that actual crimes may have occurred,” the ex-Bush administration official writes.

Patel has already demonstrated a willingness to go after his own critics, threatening legal action against Olivia Troye, his former colleague from the first Trump administration, after she criticized him during an appearance on MSNBC. Democratic and Republican senators alike reportedly aren’t in favor of his nomination, preferring that current FBI Director Christopher Wray serve out the rest of his 10-year term. If Patel has actually messed up Trump’s chances to take revenge against enemies, the MAGA loyalist might soon lose the support of the president-elect too.

Elon Musk was behind a pro–Donald Trump Super PAC that falsely claimed the president-elect’s position on abortion aligned with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s.

Politico reported Thursday that the world’s richest man was the only funder behind RBG PAC, giving the group $20.5 million to spend on ads claiming that Ginsburg was of “one mind” with Trump on the issue of abortion. The PAC’s website even displayed photos of Trump and the justice, saying that “great minds think alike.”

Ginsburg’s family vehemently opposed the ads. In October, her granddaughter Claudia Spera said in a statement that using the late justice’s name to “support Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, and specifically to suggest that she would approve of his position on abortion, is nothing short of appalling.”

Musk’s donation is a small fraction of the more than $250 million he spent on the 2024 presidential election for Trump’s candidacy but among the most secretive of the tech CEO’s political expenditures. He donated the $20.5 million on October 24, which was not disclosed until Thursday in a Federal Election Commission filing, conveniently a month after Election Day.

The RBG scheme isn’t Musk’s only deceptive political action during the campaign. The billionaire, through his larger America PAC, spent money on ads that touted Vice President Kamala Harris’s support for Israel, aimed at pro-Palestine Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan, while also funding ads attacking her as supporting anti-Israel policies, which were aimed at Jewish voters in Pennsylvania.

Musk brazenly gave away daily $1 million “lottery” prizes to voters in battleground states in the weeks leading up to the election and successfully avoided any legal consequences for it. But all of this is his known spending. He may have spent much more on right-wing dark money groups and in downballot races, which could remain hidden to the public. And thanks to America’s easily exploitable campaign finance laws, it’s all perfectly legal.