Before he reclaimed the White House, President Donald Trump seemingly spent as much time in courtrooms as he did on the campaign trail as prosecutors and Democrat-aligned attorneys raced to get their cases against him over the finish line before the election. Now, several of those cases remain in legal limbo months into his presidency.
Trump declared a “total victory” last week after an appeals court tossed out a roughly half-billion-dollar fine he faced in his New York civil fraud trial. And the sweeping set of criminal charges and civil judgments that once threatened his fortune and freedom are crumbling in appellate courts — a trajectory some experts say could lead to total exoneration.
“This was a Case of Election Interference,” Trump wrote on Truth Social when a New York appellate court wiped out more than half a billion dollars in penalties tied to Attorney General Letitia James’s civil fraud lawsuit. “Every single Dollar was thrown out, even the penalties imposed on us by the Corrupt Judge.”
While the court did not dismiss every sanction against him, Trump used the ruling to argue that every case brought against him is destined for collapse once higher courts weigh in. Attorneys working on his behalf echoed the same theme.
“What they’ve been put through by Letitia James and her office is really, really unfortunate,” Jesus Suarez, a partner at Continental PLLC representing Trump, told the Washington Examiner. “At the end of the day, the President’s been vindicated … and the rule of law in this country is stronger because of him and the strength of the entire Trump Organization.”
Trump’s latest win does not conclude his legal battles from the 2024 campaign era, but it does mark a turning point. Nearly every case that once threatened his presidency is now tied up in appellate courts or, in the case of federal prosecutions, has been abandoned altogether.
In a long post celebrating the decision, Trump signaled a desire to see additional reversals of negative court rulings he endured before winning the presidency, including a criminal case that resulted in a jury finding him guilty of 34 felony counts and a defamation case from writer E. Jean Carroll that resulted in millions of dollars in fines after a separate jury found him liable for sexually abusing her in the 1990s.
Here is where Trump’s legal cases stand.
Georgia election interference
Technically, Trump remains a criminal defendant in the racketeering and 2020 election conspiracy case that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, an elected Democrat, brought against him and 18 allies in 2023. The early days of the case produced the president’s now-iconic mug shot on Aug. 24, 2023 and touched off the lawfare campaign against the eventual winner of the 2024 election.
The indictment centered around a call Trump placed to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) following his 2020 election defeat to then-candidate Joe Biden, which Willis used as a springboard to claim Trump sought to subvert the election in the state.
But it is extremely unlikely that Trump will ever face a trial while in office. For the remainder of his term, he is protected by the presidency, and afterward he could invoke broad immunity from prosecution under the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling on presidential powers and immunity from prosecution over actions taken while in office.
While Trump is shielded by the presidency, his allies are not. Dozens of Republicans who served as alternate electors, along with senior figures such as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, and attorney John Eastman, remain under indictment in Georgia and in other state-level cases tied to the 2020 election. Those prosecutions have dragged on slowly, but they remain active — and Trump has no power to pardon or shield his allies in state court.
The prosecution has become one of the most dysfunctional of any against Trump. Willis was disqualified in December 2024 after a state appeals court found she had a conflict of interest due to her romantic relationship with a special prosecutor she appointed. She has appealed that ruling to the Georgia Supreme Court, where the matter has been pending for seven months.
If the high court upholds her removal, the case would be transferred to another district attorney, who could either drop it or revisit Willis’s charges. Even if Willis were reinstated, the trial judge would first have to sift through a backlog of motions from more than a dozen defendants trying to dismiss or narrow the charges.
In theory, prosecutors could keep the charges against Trump on hold with the aim of reviving them after he leaves office in 2029. But by then, the evidence would be close to a decade old, and Trump would likely claim immunity under the same Supreme Court precedent that already forced the dismissal of federal charges tied to his 2020 election challenges.
New York hush money conviction
Trump technically became a convicted felon in May 2024 when a Manhattan jury found him guilty on 34 counts of falsifying records connected to a hush money payment. Although Judge Juan Merchan imposed no punishment, the conviction left Trump with a criminal record, which Democrats have touted extensively, as he returned to the White House.
Trump is still trying to erase that outcome. This summer, his lawyers urged a federal appeals panel to transfer the case from state to federal court, citing the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, which came down after his trial.
Trump’s attorney Jeff Wall argued the decision entitled Trump to a federal forum and that some evidence presented at trial should have been excluded under the new immunity standard.
The panel, consisting of two Obama appointees and a Biden appointee, has not yet ruled. If Trump succeeds, the case could eventually land before the Supreme Court, giving him another chance to wipe away his conviction.
New York civil fraud
A five-judge panel on New York’s Appellate Division ruled Thursday that Judge Arthur Engoron imposed excessive fines by ordering Trump to pay a $355 million penalty, which ballooned to almost $500 billion after interest.
The divided panel struck down the financial penalty but upheld Engoron’s finding that Trump misrepresented his wealth to banks and insurers, even though there were no corporations or entities involved with Trump’s business that were harmed by his business practices.
The appeals court left in place temporary bans preventing Trump and his sons from holding executive roles in their company, though those sanctions can be paused while further appeals play out. James has already appealed to New York’s highest court, while Trump’s team is expected to ask that court to throw out the entire judgment, including the fraud findings.
Legal experts say the ruling carries significance beyond the financial relief for Trump. Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told the Washington Examiner that Engoron’s reputation has taken a blow.
“It’s not often where you have a judge in a civil or criminal case who’s making these types of determinations — these are jury questions,” Rahmani said. “The fact that he was basically the judge, jury and executioner … and he was overturned on appeal, that does affect his reputation. And [he is] likely going to be overturned again.”
Rahmani also pointed to James’s political exposure. “Not only was she unable to get the ball across the finish line here, at least temporarily pending the further appeal, she’s facing her own mortgage fraud investigation. So now, instead of being on the offense, she’s on the defense,” he said.
Andy McCarthy, National Review columnist and former prosecutor, said the ruling highlights how judicial overreach helped Trump politically.
“[James] lost, but I think Trump is president because of lawfare, and I think this was just one part of an overarching campaign in which Trump actually won sympathy from even people who weren’t particularly sympathetic to him,” McCarthy said on Fox News.
McCarthy added that the size of the fines James secured from Trump in relation to what she accused him of doing was glaring, saying, “There was such a ridiculous mismatch between what the penalty was — more than half a billion dollars — and whatever wrong was actually established in the trial, that it had to go.”
He noted that Trump could still prevail further at the New York Court of Appeals, which may examine whether James overstepped by using a consumer-protection statute in an unprecedented way to target sophisticated financial actors engaged in private business.
For now, Trump has been spared from the most punishing financial hit of his career, even as the case remains a live fight on appeal.
Sexual assault and defamation
In 2019, writer E. Jean Carroll alleged in her memoir that Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. Trump denied the allegation and publicly attacked Carroll, leading to two separate lawsuits.
In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, ordering him to pay $5 million. In January 2024, another jury directed Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million for separate defamatory comments. Trump appealed both cases.
A three-judge panel upheld the $5 million verdict last December, and the full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reconsider the case in June. He can still try to get the Supreme Court to hear his appeal.
Trump’s appeal of the larger $83.3 million judgment is still pending.
Federal election and classified documents cases
Former special counsel Jack Smith brought two criminal cases against Trump: one in Washington, D.C., for his alleged role in trying to overturn the 2020 election, and another in Florida for allegedly retaining classified documents. Both cases were dropped after Trump’s reelection in line with Justice Department policy barring criminal prosecutions of sitting presidents.
Those dismissals make it unlikely either case will return before Trump leaves office, if ever.
A shifting tide for a president once enveloped in lawfare
The appellate courts now hold the future of Trump’s legal battles in their hands. His victory in the civil fraud case showed that sanctions imposed in trial courts can be pared back or eliminated altogether, giving him fresh momentum as he seeks to undo the remaining judgments.
Rahmani said Trump’s record so far reflects a mix of aggressive strategy and favorable timing. “Trump’s lawyers masterfully used procedure in D.C. to get stays, to get delays … to run out the clock in that case until he was reelected,” he said, pointing to the dismissal of Smith’s federal cases.
NEW YORK APPEALS COURT TOSSES LETITIA JAMES’S $515 MILLION TRUMP FRAUD PENALTY
“In Fulton County in Georgia, they went on the offense. They put DA Fani Willis on the run,” he said. “Really the only loss for Trump per se was Alvin Bragg in New York, but even then, even though he got those 34 felony counts, there was no sentencing, Trump was discharged. That record has allowed Trump to cast his courtroom fights as part of a broader comeback story, one that he aims to make a clean sweep so long as an appeal remains at his disposal.”
“So it really seems like a clean sweep, aside from being a convicted felon for the current president,” Rahmani added.
