Donald Trump
Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump might have easily avoided conviction at his second impeachment trial — but he could find it a lot tougher to beat the several serious criminal and civil probes that he now faces.
And at least one of those investigations carries the potential for Trump to be sent to jail if convicted.
That would be an unprecedented event in American history, as no ex-president has ever been charged with a crime, much less locked up for one.
Trump, a Republican, whose spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has claimed that the probes are politically motivated witch hunts by Democratic prosecutors.
But judges in two of those investigations have repeatedly ruled against Trump’s lawyers in disputes related to evidence.
Those rulings underscore the criminal and civil risk that Trump faces, as does the fact that on Jan. 20, he lost the protection from prosecution effectively rendered by holding the office of president.
“There’s a lot of balls up in the air in the potential criminal arena, and if I were Donald Trump, I would not be resting easy,” said Joseph Tacopina, a leading criminal defense attorney in New York City.
Find him the votes
The most recent of the criminal probes was launched just last week in Georgia, by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Willis’ investigation is focused on an early Jan. 2 phone call that Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
During that call, which was recorded, Trump pressured Raffensperger, who is the top election official in the state, to “find” him enough votes to overturn his election loss to Joe Biden in Georgia.
Willis plans to begin asking a grand jury next month to issue subpoenas in the probe, which her office has said is eyeing possible violations of election fraud laws, as well as “the making of false statements to state and local government bodies, conspiracy, racketeering” and other charges.
Trump for months had claimed without evidence that he was swindled out of a second term by widespread ballot fraud to Biden’s benefit.
Thousands of Trump supporters who believed those falsehoods rioted at the U.S Capitol on Jan. 6 in a violent, but ultimately failed effort to get Congress to reject Biden’s victory. Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for inciting that riot with his claims.
A Department of Justice official last month said that while prosecutors are focused at the moment with charging people who rioted at the Capitol itself, “we will continue to follow the facts and the law” when looking at the question of whether to charge Trump or any of his allies with incitement.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who was one of 43 Republicans to vote for Trump’s acquittal Saturday at his impeachment trial, explicitly suggested in a post-verdict speech that Trump could face…
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