Donald Trump made history in May 2024 by becoming the first US president ever convicted of a crime.
A jury found the former president guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection to a hush money payment to a porn star.
Stormy Daniels alleged that she had an affair with Trump in 2006, something the former president has denied outright. Even so, shortly before the 2016 presidential election, Daniels received a $130,000 payment from Trump’s then-fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen.
Cohen was later reimbursed for the payment — reimbursements that were fraudulently logged as legal expenses. A jury of 12 New Yorkers found that Trump falsified those business records as part of a plot to interfere with the election by hiding negative information about himself from voters.
“This was a rigged, disgraceful trial,” Trump raged outside the courtroom at the time.
“The real verdict is going to be November 5 by the people, and they know what happened here,” he added, referencing the 2024 presidential election.
“I’m a very innocent man,” he said.
It turns out that Trump was right — and on November 5 the American people decided his conviction wasn’t enough to bar him from office and instead gave him a second term in the White House.
The judge in charge of the Manhattan case, Juan Merchan, has indefinitely delayed the sentencing in the case but has yet to rule on dismissing the case or simply freezing it for the next four years. Trump was set to be sentenced on November 26.
Can Trump pardon himself?
From a legal standpoint, when he becomes president, Trump could pardon himself for any federal convictions.
But he could not pardon himself for any convictions on the state level, such as his conviction in New York.
“The state and federal systems in the United States are completely separate,” Steve Duffy, a jury consultant at Trial Behavior Consulting, told The Independent prior to the verdict in the spring of 2024.
“The only person who could pardon him would be the governor of New York – who is exceedingly unlikely to do that,” he added, in reference to Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat.
Attorney Duncan Levin, who worked at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office years before the case against Trump, echoed this: “This is a case brought by New York state and is not subject to a federal pardon. The president of the United States can pardon on federal cases, but not on state cases – he would have no ability to pardon himself by law.”
That said, Levin told The Independent that Trump would have been able to pardon himself had he been convicted in his federal cases. But following Trump’s election victory, Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped the two federal cases against Trump.
The president-elect was charged in Washington, D.C., over attempts to overturn the 2020 election and in Florida over his alleged mishandling of classified documents since leaving the White House in January 2021.
“The [Justice] Department’s position is that the Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated,” Smith wrote about the election subversion case in a six-page filing in November after the election. “This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant.”
Judge Tanya Chutkan then dismissed the case.
Smith said he was seeking to drop the charges against Trump “without prejudice,” meaning that it would be possible for charges to be brought yet again at a later time, with Smith referring to Trump’s incoming presidential immunity as “temporary.”
“Dismissal without prejudice is also consistent with the Government’s understanding that the immunity afforded to a sitting President is temporary, expiring when they leave office,” Chutkan wrote in her ruling.
In his federal cases in Florida and Washington D.C., Trump, once he’s president, could have simply fired Smith and shut down the investigations. Smith chose to depart before that happened.
Trump is also facing state charges in Georgia in connection to his efforts to overturn the 2020 results in that state.
His RICO case in the state may also be in trouble once he takes office. That case is on hold as an appeals court is weighing whether or not Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue to prosecute. Willis allegedly had a relationship with a man who she hired to work on the Trump case. A ruling in that case isn’t expected until next year, likely after Trump takes office.
While Trump will not have the power to pardon himself in state cases, the prosecutors in those cases will have to figure out how they will deal with the president-elect’s return to the White House.
Smith said in an appeals court filing that prosecutors were continuing the mishandling of classified documents case against two of Trump’s employees. The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is looking at Judge Aileen Cannon’s order to dismiss all charges in the case.
The co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, stand accused of helping the president-elect obstruct a federal investigation into government documents being taken from the first Trump White House. They have both pleaded not guilty.
What happens now?
The fact of the matter is that it’s anyone’s guess as to how everything will shake out because this has never happened before in US history.
“It’s never happened before the former president has ever faced a criminal trial,” Levin said. “It’s never happened that a felon is elected president of the United States. None of that has ever happened before. It’s without any precedents whatsoever.”
If Trump tries to pardon himself, Levin predicted it would end up in a legal battle escalated to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Of course, Trump has toyed with pardoning himself in the past.
In September 2023, he said he had discussed the possibility of pardoning himself at the end of his last term — but ultimately decided against it.
“I could’ve pardoned myself. Do you know what? I was given an option to pardon myself. I could’ve pardoned myself when I left,” he told NBC News.
“People said, ‘Would you like to pardon yourself?’ I had a couple of attorneys that said, ‘You could do it if you want.’ I had some people that said, ‘It would look bad if you do it because I think it would look terrible.’”
“I said, ‘The last thing I’d ever do is give myself a pardon,’” he claimed.
Asked if he would pardon himself if he were to win the 2024 election, he said: “I think it’s very unlikely. What did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything wrong. You mean because I challenge an election, they want to put me in jail?”
