The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law enacted on June 15, 1917, shortly after the United States entered World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18 : 18 U.S.C. ch. 37.
In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit a crime at some time in the future. Criminal law in some countries or for some conspiracies may require that at least one overt act be undertaken in furtherance of that agreement, to constitute an offense. There is no limit to the number participating in the conspiracy and, in most countries, the plan itself is the crime, so there is no requirement that any steps have been taken to put the plan into effect. For the purposes of concurrence, the actus reus is a continuing one and parties may join the plot later and incur joint liability and conspiracy can be charged where the co-conspirators have been acquitted or cannot be traced. Finally, repentance by one or more parties does not affect liability but may reduce their sentence.
Thomas J. Fitton is an American conservative activist and the president of Judicial Watch.
John Henry Durham is an American lawyer who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut from 2018 to 2021. By April 2019, the Trump administration assigned him to investigate the origins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, and in October 2020 he was appointed special counsel for the Department of Justice on that matter.
The Russian government conducted foreign electoral interference in the 2016 United States elections with the goals of sabotaging the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and increasing political and social discord in the United States. According to the U.S. intelligence community, the operation—code named Project Lakhta—was ordered directly by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The "hacking and disinformation campaign" to damage Clinton and help Trump became the "core of the scandal known as Russiagate". The 448-page Mueller Report, made public in April 2019, examined over 200 contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates.
The following is a list of notable lawsuits involving former United States president Donald Trump. The list excludes cases that only name Trump as a legal formality in his capacity as president, such as habeas corpus requests.
Jeffrey Bossert Clark is an American lawyer who was Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division from 2018 to 2021. In September 2020, he was also appointed acting head of the Civil Division. In 2020 and 2021, Clark allegedly helped then-president Donald Trump attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Clark's actions in that endeavor were reviewed by the District of Columbia Bar – the entity authorized by law to pursue attorney discipline and disbarment in the District of Columbia – which recommended discipline to the DC Court of Appeals in July 2022, and in August 2024 its Board on Professional Responsibility recommended a two year suspension of his law license. He was identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal prosecution of Donald Trump over attempts to overturn the 2020 election. On August 14, 2023, he was indicted along with 18 other people in the prosecution related to the 2020 election in Georgia.
Richard William Gates III is an American former political consultant and lobbyist who pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States for making false statements in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. He is a longtime business associate of Paul Manafort and served as deputy to Manafort when the latter was campaign manager of the Donald Trump presidential campaign in 2016, and after under Kellyanne Conway.
The Special Counsel investigation was a United States law enforcement and counterintelligence investigation of the Russian government's efforts to interfere in United States politics and any possible involvement by members of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. It was primarily focused on the 2016 presidential election.
Trial of Donald Trump may refer to these legal cases against Donald Trump in his personal capacity, which have led or are expected to lead to a trial:
Corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding is a felony under U.S. federal law. It was enacted as part of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 in reaction to the Enron scandal, and closed a legal loophole on who could be charged with evidence tampering by defining the new crime very broadly.
The United States Justice Department investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election began in early 2021 with investigations and prosecutions of hundreds of individuals who participated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol. By early 2022, the investigation had expanded to examine Donald Trump's inner circle, with the Justice Department impaneling several federal grand juries to investigate the attempts to overturn the election. Later in 2022, a special counsel was appointed. On August 1, 2023, Trump was indicted. The indictment also describes six alleged co-conspirators.
John Luman Smith is an American attorney who has served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant U.S. attorney, acting U.S. attorney, and head of the department's Public Integrity Section. He was also the chief prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, an international tribunal at The Hague tasked with investigating and prosecuting war crimes in the Kosovo War.
Three days after Donald Trump announced his campaign for the 2024 United States presidential election, a special counsel investigation was opened by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on November 18, 2022, to continue two investigations initiated by the Justice Department (DOJ) regarding former U.S. President Donald Trump. Garland appointed Jack Smith, a longtime federal prosecutor, to lead the independent investigations. Smith was tasked with investigating Trump's role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack and Trump's mishandling of government records, including classified documents.
In 2023, four criminal indictments were filed against Donald Trump, former president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Two indictments are on state charges and two indictments are on federal charges.
United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, Waltine Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira is a federal criminal case against Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States; Walt Nauta, his personal aide and valet; and Mar-a-Lago maintenance chief Carlos De Oliveira. The grand jury indictment brought 40 felony counts against Trump related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents after his presidency, to which he pleaded not guilty. The case marks the first federal indictment of a former U.S. president.
United States of America v. Donald J. Trump was a federal criminal case against Donald Trump, the president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, regarding his alleged participation in attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election, including his involvement in the January 6 Capitol attack.
The State of Georgia v. Donald J. Trump, et al. is a pending criminal case against Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, and 18 co-defendants. The prosecution alleges that Trump led a "criminal racketeering enterprise", in which he and all other defendants "knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome" of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in Georgia. All defendants are charged with one count of violating Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute, which has a penalty of five to twenty years in prison. The indictment comes in the context of Trump's broader effort to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court determined that presidential immunity from criminal prosecution presumptively extends to all of a president's "official acts" – with absolute immunity for official acts within an exclusive presidential authority that Congress cannot regulate such as the pardon, command of the military, execution of laws, or control of the executive branch. The case extends from an ongoing federal case to determine whether then-President Donald Trump and others engaged in election interference during the 2020 election, including events during the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. It is the first time a case concerning criminal prosecution for alleged official acts of a president was brought before the Supreme Court.
State of Arizona v. Kelli Ward, et al. is a state criminal prosecution concerning the Trump fake electors plot in Arizona.
