A criminal investigation in the state of Georgia. The expansion of a New York-based investigation into Donald Trump’s business empire. Lawsuits filed by women who claim that Trump assaulted them. Billion-dollar defamation suits launched against people acting under Trump’s demands. Angry enemies and ex-friends who see new legal vulnerability AND litigation and possible charges stemming from MAGA’s deadly revolt on the United States Capitol continued.
After last week’s swift acquittal in former President Trump’s second impeachment trial in the Senate, Trump, his advisers and his lawyers spent part of the long weekend celebrating their isolation from yet another legal nuisance.
But with the Senate’s rear-view trial, Trump is now facing a number of other legal dramas during his immediate post-president. No longer protected by the Oval Office’s considerable legal protection, Trump privately lamented that his enemies will investigate or “prosecute me for the rest of my life,” according to one person who discussed the matter with him in the past few weeks.
The new processes that mainly deal with his attempts to overturn the election results appear to be growing weekly.
On Tuesday, a new federal lawsuit was filed by NAACP on behalf of Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi. The suit, which was also filed against Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, alleges that both men and both groups violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 when they tried to prevent Joe’s victory from being certified. Biden in 2020.
“The lawsuit alleges that Trump and Giuliani violated … the Ku Klux Klan Act, which was passed in 1871 in response to the KKK’s violence and intimidation, preventing members of the Southern Congress during Reconstruction from fulfilling their constitutional duties,” a press release announcing the process said. “The statute was designed specifically to protect against conspiracies.”
Several advisers to Trump and Giuliani did not answer questions about which lawyers would be handling this federal case for their respective clients – although Michael van der Veen, one of Trump’s lawyers at this month’s Senate trial, and Alan Dershowitz, the famous lawyer who joined Trump’s legal defense for the first impeachment trial, both told The Daily Beast that they had not been contacted by Trump’s orbit about these matters until Tuesday.
The federal lawsuit comes at a time when lawyers working in the DC attorney general’s office were still debating whether to accuse the former president of violating local law when he allegedly incited the riots, according to CNN.
While the riot was the culmination of months of Trump’s clumsy attempts to overturn the 2020 election, this is not the only chapter in the efforts of Trump and his allies that potentially left the former president legally exposed.
On February 10, prosecutors in Georgia launched a criminal investigation on Trump’s conference call in early January (before the turmoil), during which the then president pressured state officials to “find” the votes needed to undo Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 in that state. The phone call was just a facet, secretly captured on tape, of Trump and the month-long legal crusade and messages from prominent Republicans to rule out Biden’s clear and legitimate victories in several crucial states. Trump’s failed mission has become increasingly authoritarian as the presidential transition has progressed, but virtually all legal challenges have been rejected or rejected by the court, including by Trump-appointed judges. The Georgia secretary of state’s office also opened its own separate investigation into the now infamous call, characterizing the investigation as “fact-finding and administrative”.
“The moment here is not accidental, given [the] impeachment trial, ”said Jason Miller, senior adviser to Trump, in a brief statement to The Daily Beast, referring to the criminal investigation in Georgia. “This is simply the Democrats’ last attempt to score political points by continuing their witch hunt against President Trump, and everyone realizes it.”
But legal exposure may extend beyond political affiliations, as the voting technology companies that Trump and his main allies spread as part of a fictional plot to rig or hack the election and report it to Biden have already sent out numerous legal threats. to individuals close to the ex-president.
Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems have already filed huge lawsuits against Giuliani, former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, and others. Giuliani, who served as Trump’s personal lawyer, and Powell were promoting these allegations of fictional conspiracy at the behest of Trump, who even publicized these false allegations on Twitter and elsewhere. Those working on Team Dominion, for example, said they are still looking closely at others involved in profoundly tainting the company – and that group of people includes, perhaps first, the 45th president of the United States. “Our legal team is looking, frankly, at everyone, and we are not ruling out anyone,” Dominion CEO John Poulos said in an interview with CNN in late January.
The lawsuits against Trump in his post-presidency may also be personal. Two days before Trump stepped down last month, MSNBC presenter Joe Scarborough publicly stated that he was still considering a possible lawsuit against Trump, who during his time at the White House had repeatedly promoted defamation without evidence that Scarborough is a killer.
According to a person with knowledge of the matter, Scarborough recently told people that he is still considering filing a lawsuit against the former president, but that he has not yet made a final decision and probably won’t for months. However, the MSNBC host also said that if there is a pile of civil lawsuits filed against Trump in the coming months, especially about his role at the start of the January 6 riot, that would likely be a factor in his calculation for not worrying about filing your own process.
In the past few months, added this knowledgeable source, Scarborough has discussed a possible lawsuit against Trump with Washington, DC, attorney Elizabeth “Libby” Locke of the notable firm Clare Locke.
In the weeks after Biden’s oath, Trump had openly expressed himself in public appearances and in the media. Many longtime allies of the former president believed he was the best and advised Trump to continue doing so for the time being, especially if there is a torrent of lawsuits being filed. A source close to the former president said they were “happy [Trump’s] is no longer on Twitter, “because if he were, his post-presidential anger tweets could” inevitably “make potential lawsuits, particularly defamation cases, against him stronger.
But after the death of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday, Trump could not contain himself. He called Fox News to talk about Limbaugh’s life and friendship – and ended up trying to do that about himself and the lie that he had won the 2020 election. Shortly after, it was announced that Trump would appear on the Hannity, Newsmax TV and OAN, also on Wednesday.
An individual familiar with the matter said that Trump was recently reminded not to mention Dominion or Smartmatic during any new interviews, due to fears that it could be used against him if one of the companies decides to go after him in defamation lawsuits as well.
However, not all of the ex-president’s litigation challenges are new. Others lay dormant, waiting for him to return to civilian life.
His new status also sparked prosecutors in New York who, according to Wall Street Newspaper, are now looking for loans that Trump has made for several buildings, including the main one for his family business: the Trump Tower in Manhattan. The Trump Organization and the former president are still struggling to figure out how to deal with the hundreds of millions of dollars in estimated debt incurred, with maturity dates for these loans set to arrive within a few years.
In New York, both the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state 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 spawned a separate court battle over prosecutor Cyrus Vance’s attempts to subpoena Trump’s tax returns. The case remains pending in the Supreme Court, but Vance reportedly has already obtained many of the statements by other means, according to Bloomberg.
The power of the post also gave former President Trump the ability to dodge the negative consequences of his alleged track record of sexual violence and harassment. Another source close to Trump says the former president continues to occasionally complain about the Me movement as well, denouncing it as one of the most destructive moves to gain national strength during his tenure at the White House.
A lawsuit filed by ex-journalist E. Jean Carroll alleging that Trump defamed her by calling her a liar – after she accused 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 the state court and place it in the federal court, where the department’s lawyers would handle the case on Trump’s behalf.
In addition, throughout the Trump administration, Summer Zervos, who was once a participant in Trump’s now extinct NBC reality show The Apprentice, was trying to depose Trump in a defamation suit. Towards the end of the 2016 presidential election, Zervos publicly accused the then-named Republican of sexually assaulting her, grabbing her breasts and “pushing[ing]”His“ genitals ”for her. While in office, the White House’s official position was that the many women who had officially declared accusing Trump of sexual misconduct or assault were simply lying.
At the beginning of last year, a New York court suspended the case, thus postponing any possible testimony of the then-incumbent President of the United States. But last week, Zervos and his lawyer formally asked a judge to allow her to continue the process, as he can no longer claim protection for the highest office in the country that his lawyers have long said have protected him from that deposition.
“[The] The defendant is no longer president. As a result, the defendant’s appeal is debatable, ”argued Zervos’ lawyer in the new lawsuit.