Here’s where all the legal cases against Trump stand since his return to the White House

Before he fought his way back to the White House, President Donald Trump was in court battling a slew of civil lawsuits and criminal charges that threatened to upend his finances and take away his freedom. Those cases have mostly abated since his return to office, albeit with some loose ends.

On Wednesday, a judge ended the last effort to punish Trump in the courts for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, dismissing the Georgia election interference case against Trump and others after the prosecutor who took over the case declined to pursue the charges.

Since Trump’s reelection last year, four separate criminal cases — including his hush money conviction and allegations of election interference and illegally hoarding classified documents — have either been dropped, resolved or put aside. On the civil side, several high-profile lawsuits against Trump have been quietly working their way through the appeals process.

Here’s a look at some of Trump’s criminal and civil cases and where they stand now:

New York hush money case

Trump became the first former U.S. president convicted of felonies when a New York jury found him guilty in May 2024 of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.

Though Trump could have faced jail time, Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan in January sentenced him instead to what’s known as an unconditional discharge, leaving his conviction on the books but sparing him any punishment.

Trump was set to take office just days later, and Merchan said he had to respect Trump’s upcoming legal protections as president, even wishing him “Godspeed as you assume your second term in office.”

Trump is trying to get the conviction erased, a push that was given new life in November when a federal appeals court ordered a lower court to reconsider its decision to keep the case in state court instead of moving it to federal court.

Georgia election interference case

In August 2023, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and 18 others with participating in a scheme to illegally try to overturn his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Willis cited Trump’s January 2021 phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, an effort to replace Georgia’s Democratic presidential electors with ones who would vote for Trump, harassment of a Fulton County election worker and the unauthorized copying of data and software from elections equipment.

But the case stalled over revelations Willis had been in a relationship with the man she appointed to prosecute it. A state appeals court in December removed Willis from the case and the state Supreme Court later declined to hear her appeal.

Pete Skandalakis, the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, took over the case in November after he said several prosecutors declined to take it. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee issued a one-paragraph order dismissing the case in its entirety Wednesday after Skandalakis said he has decided not to pursue it further.

Federal election case

Special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump in August 2023 with conspiring to overturn the results of his election loss to President Joe Biden in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Prosecutors allege Trump and his allies knowingly promoted election fraud lies in a bid to push state officials to overturn Biden’s win and pressure Vice President Mike Pence to disrupt the ceremonial counting of electoral votes.

But Smith moved to drop the case after Trump won reelection in November. Longstanding Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution.

Classified documents case

In a separate prosecution, Smith charged Trump in June 2023 with illegally retaining classified documents he took from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after he left office in January 2021, and then obstructing government demands to give them back. Prosecutors filed additional charges the following month, accusing Trump of showing a Pentagon “plan of attack” to visitors at his golf club in New Jersey.

Smith also moved to drop that case after Trump’s election victory.

Sexual assault lawsuits

In May 2023, a federal jury found that Trump sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s and later defamed her. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million.

In January 2024, a second jury awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million in damages for comments Trump had made about her while he was president, finding that they were defamatory. A federal appeals court panel upheld the jury’s finding in September. Trump has since asked the full appellate court to hear arguments and reconsider the ruling.

Trump also appealed the first jury decision, but a federal appeals court in December upheld it and then declined in June to reconsider. In November, Trump asked the Supreme Court to hear his appeal.

New York civil fraud lawsuit

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump in 2022, alleging he habitually exaggerated his wealth and the value of marquee assets like Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago.

In February 2024, a New York judge ordered Trump to pay $355 million in penalties, but an appeals court in August threw out that massive financial penalty while narrowly endorsing a lower court’s finding that he engaged in fraud by padding his wealth on financial statements provided to lenders and insurers.

The appeals court judges ruled that the penalty — which had soared to $515 million with interest tacked on each day — violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on excessive fines. At the same time, they left in place other punishments, including bans on Trump and his two eldest sons from serving in corporate leadership for a few years.

James filed a notice of appeal with the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, in September.