New York, Jan 1
The new year 2024, which begins on Monday, might mark a "miserable new year" for former US President Donald Trump who could see his world coming tumbling down, a report said.
Throughout 2023 he made it through a stronger position than what he began in some ways facing a mountain of litigation in four jurisdictions leading to 91 counts of felony, never before faced by a president of the US.
While Trump has made it through 2023 in a stronger position than when he began in some ways, the New Year could see his world come tumbling down, Newsweek said in its latest issue released over the weekend.
Though the former president is still leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination despite his many legal woes, his campaign and court calendars are set to increasingly overlap in 2024 making it hard for him to campaign freely for his 2nd term in the White House, media reports said.
Closing arguments in cases are scheduled for early January in Trump's civil fraud trial in a lower Manhattan court, which threatens the future of his real estate empire that brought him fame and later catapulted him to the White House.
New York AG has brought a civil frauds tax case suing him for $250 million in penalties while judge Engoron presiding has already cancelled his business licenses to do trade in New York. But put in abeyance by an appeals court.
Most of his election subversion cases come to a head in March 2024 when the actual trial begins in Washington DC district courts before Judge Chutkan and the Fulton county Racketeering case under the RICO act in Georgia.
Judge Arthur Engoron has the top claim in the lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, ruled that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively exaggerating his assets and net worth, making deals and securing loans.
Trump has denied wrongdoing, saying the financial documents actually understated his net worth, media reports said.
While his business associates estimated his wealth at $3.5 billion, Trump had his own estimate of $6.5 billion.
Paying $250 million in damages for tax fraud is a drop in the ocean for Trump but losing his business licenses in New York would hurt his credibility, integrity and image as a businessman.
He also faces a e defamation claim stems from a lawsuit by columnist E. Jean Carroll who said Trump defamed her in 2019 after she first publicly accused him of raping her in the dressing room of a department store.
The lawsuit has been delayed for years by appeals.
She is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages and substantially more in punitive damages, Newsweek reported.
Claims that Trump defamed Carroll again with remarks he made publicly after she won a separate defamation lawsuit earlier this year have been added to the lawsuit.
In May, a Manhattan jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages.
The former Elle magazine columnist is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages and substantially more in punitive damage, reports said.
The first of Trump's four criminal trials -- on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the violent riot at the US Capitol January 6, 2021,
-- is scheduled to begin in early March.
Special counsel Jack Smith is prosecuting, filing a brief on Saturday that urged a federal appeals court to reject Trump's claims of executive immunity as a president..
Trump is also charged in another federal case with illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
A trial in that case is currently scheduled for May 20 in Florida, though Trump's lawyers are working to delay it.
Trump also faces state charges in Georgia that accuses him of trying to subvert the 2020 election result there, and charges in New York that accuse him of falsifying business records in connection with an alleged hush-money payment to a porn actor.
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and decried them as politically motivated efforts to derail his 2024 campaign.
Still, the former president's many legal problems have not yet appeared to hurt him as he campaigns to regain the White House -- his lead against his GOP rivals is even stronger now than it was before his first indictment in March.
Lawsuits seeking to remove Trump from the ballot in 2024 are also pending in 14 states, including in battleground Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin.
And it is likely that the nation's highest court will have the final say on whether Trump appears on the ballot in Maine and other states.
