Donald Trump – Early life, Education, Career and Foreign Policies

Trump lives at his Mar-a-Lago club, having established an office there as provided for by the Former Presidents Act. Trump is entitled to live there legally as a club employee.

Trump’s false claims concerning the 2020 election were commonly referred to as the “big lie” in the press and by his critics. In May 2021, Trump and his supporters attempted to co-opt the term, using it to refer to the election itself. The Republican Party used Trump’s false election narrative to justify the imposition of new voting restrictions in its favor. As late as July 2022, Trump was still pressuring state legislators to overturn the 2020 election.

Unlike other former presidents, Trump continued to dominate his party; he has been described as a modern party boss. He continued fundraising, raising more than twice as much as the Republican Party itself, and profited from fundraisers many Republican candidates held at Mar-a-Lago. Much of his focus was on how elections are run and on ousting election officials who had resisted his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. In the 2022 midterm elections he endorsed over 200 candidates for various offices, most of whom supported his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

In February 2021, Trump registered a new company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), for providing “social networking services” to U.S. customers. In March 2024, TMTG merged with special-purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition and became a public company. In February 2022, TMTG launched Truth Social, a social media platform. As of March 2023, Trump Media, which had taken $8 million from Russia-connected entities, was being investigated by federal prosecutors for possible money laundering.

Trump is the only U.S. president or former president to be convicted of a crime and the first major-party candidate to run for president after a felony conviction. As of May 2024, he faces numerous criminal charges and civil cases.

When Trump left the White House in January 2021, he took government materials with him to Mar-a-Lago. By May 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) realized that important documents had not been turned over to them and asked his office to locate them.

In January 2022, they retrieved 15 boxes of White House records from Mar-a-Lago. NARA later informed the Department of Justice that some of the retrieved documents were classified material. The Justice Department began an investigation and sent Trump a subpoena for additional material. Justice Department officials visited Mar-a-Lago and received some classified documents from Trump’s lawyers, one of whom signed a statement affirming that all material marked as classified had been returned.

On August 8, 2022, FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago to recover government documents and material Trump had taken with him when he left office in violation of the Presidential Records Act, reportedly including some related to nuclear weapons.

The search warrant indicates an investigation of potential violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice laws. The items taken in the search included 11 sets of classified documents, four of them tagged as “top secret” and one as “top secret/SCI”, the highest level of classification.

On November 18, 2022, U.S. attorney general Merrick Garland appointed federal prosecutor Jack Smith as a special counsel to oversee the federal criminal investigations into Trump retaining government property at Mar-a-Lago and examining Trump’s role in the events leading up to the Capitol attack.

On December 19, 2022, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack recommended criminal charges against Trump for obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and inciting or assisting an insurrection.

In December 2022, following a jury trial, the Trump Organization was convicted on 17 counts of criminal tax fraud, conspiracy, and falsifying business records in connection with a tax-fraud scheme stretching over 15 years. In January 2023, the organization was fined the maximum $1.6 million, and its chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg was sentenced to jail and probation after a plea deal. Trump was not personally charged in the case.

In June 2023, following a special counsel investigation, a federal grand jury in Miami indicted Trump on 31 counts of “willfully retaining national defense information” under the Espionage Act, one count of making false statements, and one count each of conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding government documents, corruptly concealing records, concealing a document in a federal investigation and scheming to conceal their efforts.

He pleaded not guilty. A superseding indictment the following month added three charges. The judge assigned to the case, Aileen Cannon, was appointed to the bench by Trump and had previously issued rulings favorable to him in a past civil case, some of which were overturned by an appellate court. She moved slowly on the case, indefinitely postponed the trial in May 2024, and dismissed it on July 15, ruling that the special counsel’s appointment was unconstitutional. On August 26, Special Counsel Smith appealed the dismissal.

On August 1, 2023, a Washington, D.C., federal grand jury indicted Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. He was charged with conspiring to defraud the U.S., obstruct the certification of the Electoral College vote, and deprive voters of the civil right to have their votes counted, and obstructing an official proceeding. Trump pleaded not guilty.

Later in August, a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury indicted Trump on 13 charges, including racketeering, for his efforts to subvert the election outcome in Georgia; multiple Trump campaign officials were also indicted. Trump surrendered, was processed at Fulton County Jail, and was released on bail pending trial. He pleaded not guilty. On March 13, 2024, the judge dismissed three of the 13 charges against Trump.

During the 2016 presidential election campaign, American Media, Inc. (AMI), publisher of the National Enquirer, and a company set up by Cohen paid Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult film actress Stormy Daniels for keeping silent about their alleged affairs with Trump between 2006 and 2007.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to breaking campaign finance laws, saying he had arranged both payments at Trump’s direction to influence the presidential election. Trump denied the affairs and said he was not aware of Cohen’s payment to Daniels, but he reimbursed him in 2017. Federal prosecutors asserted that Trump had been involved in discussions regarding nondisclosure payments as early as 2014.

Court documents showed that the FBI believed Trump was directly involved in the payment to Daniels, based on calls he had with Cohen in October 2016. Federal prosecutors closed the investigation in 2019, but in 2021, the New York State Attorney General’s Office and Manhattan District Attorney’s Office opened a criminal investigations into Trump’s business activities. The Manhattan DA’s Office subpoenaed the Trump Organization and AMI for records related to the payments and Trump and the Trump Organization for eight years of tax returns.

In March 2023, a New York grand jury indicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to book the hush money payments to Daniels as business expenses, in an attempt to influence the 2016 election. The trial began in April 2024, and in May a jury convicted Trump on all 34 counts. Sentencing is set for November 26, 2024.

In September 2022, the attorney general of New York filed a civil fraud case against Trump, his three oldest children, and the Trump Organization. During the investigation leading up to the lawsuit, Trump was fined $110,000 for failing to turn over records subpoenaed by the attorney general.

In an August 2022 deposition, Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 400 times. The presiding judge ruled in September 2023 that Trump, his adult sons and the Trump Organization repeatedly committed fraud and ordered their New York business certificates canceled and their business entities sent into receivership for dissolution.

In February 2024, the court found Trump liable, ordered him to pay a penalty of more than $350 million plus interest, for a total exceeding $450 million, and barred him from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or legal entity for three years. Trump said he would appeal the verdict. The judge also ordered the company to be overseen by the monitor appointed by the court in 2023 and an independent director of compliance, and that any “restructuring and potential dissolution” would be the decision of the monitor.

In May 2023, a New York jury in a federal lawsuit brought by journalist E. Jean Carroll in 2022 (“Carroll II”) found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and ordered him to pay her $5 million. Trump asked for a new trial or a reduction of the award, arguing that the jury had not found him liable for rape. He also separately countersued Carroll for defamation. The judge for the two lawsuits ruled against Trump, writing that Carroll’s accusation of “rape” is “substantially true”.

Trump appealed both decisions. In January 2024, the jury in the defamation case brought by Carroll in 2019 (“Carroll I”) ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million in damages. In March, Trump posted a $91.6 million bond and appealed.