Reason why new criminal cases against Donald Trump are being thrown out after election win
Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the United States when he is inaugurated in January 2025. And with that, the former The Apprentice star will see a number of criminal cases against him quietly disappear.
Trump secured a huge victory in the 2024 US presidential election on 5 November, beating Vice President Kamala Harris by some distance in what pollsters had billed as a very even contest that could have gone either way.
But instead of it going down to the wire and potentially taking days to decide, Trump secured the 270 electoral college votes needed to return to the White House within half a day of polls closing.
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It means that the incumbent president, Joe Biden, will officially hand over power to Trump and vice president-elect, JD Vance, on 20 January next year.
But what about the criminal cases against Trump? Well, it is two-fold.
One thing Trump cannot avoid is being sentenced for the 34 felonies he has already been found guilty of in a hush money trial from earlier this year.
During that, he was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records, which included a $130,000 (£101,000) hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to stop her speaking about their alleged sexual encounters.
Despite pleading not guilty to all 34 counts, the 78-year-old was found guilty.
Sentencing for this will take place on 26 November; something Trump won't be able to stop.
The New York Times reported that 42 percent of convictions relating to the felonies do result in prison time. But in Trump's case, this is not likely to end up in him being put behind bars due to federal law prohibiting any sitting president from being prosecuted in such a way.
Outside of this, Trump had been facing criminal cases filed under the justice department.
One was for his retention of classified presidential documents after being kicked out of office in 2020. The other had been in relation to his efforts to overturn the 2020 US presidential election, which he comfortably lost to Biden.
Now, it is very likely special counsel prosecutors will shut down both cases against Trump, with neither going to trial.
With neither case going to be completed behind the inauguration of Trump, it is now highly likely the attorney general appointed by Trump will drop the charges, according to sources who spoke to NBC News.
But on top of that, the special counsel's office would be unable to pursue further action against Trump due to him set to become a sitting president once again, with those in office having immunity from prosecution.
It comes as former Trump attorney general, William Barr, said in a statement: "The American people have rendered their verdict on President Trump and decisively chosen him to lead the country for the next four years. They chose him to lead us with the full knowledge of the claims against him by prosecutors around the country.
"The attorney general and all the state prosecutors should do the right thing and help the country move forward by dismissing the cases."
Topics: Crime, Donald Trump, Politics, US News
Tom Earnshaw