FORMER US PRESIDENT Donald Trump said he expects to be arrested and indicted over the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

Trump has already been indicted over his handling of classified documents, the first former US president to face federal criminal charges.

The twice-impeached Trump, who is seeking to return to the White House in 2024, has also been charged in New York with making election-eve hush money payments to a porn star.

Here are the key cases involving the 77-year-old one-term president:

Capitol attack

Today, Trump said that he had received a letter from Smith, the special counsel, on Sunday stating that he’s a target of the investigation into the attack on the Capitol by his supporters, who were seeking to halt the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.

Trump, currently the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said he was given four days to report to a grand jury, “which almost always means an Arrest and Indictment.”

Trump did not specify what charges he may face and a Trump advisor told The Washington Post the former president would decline to testify before the grand jury in Washington.

Before the Capitol attack, Trump delivered a fiery speech nearby urging the crowd to “fight like hell.”

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump claimed he was a victim of “election interference and a complete and total political weaponization of law enforcement.”

Classified documents

Trump, in an indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith, is accused of endangering national security by holding on to top secret nuclear and defense documents after leaving the White House.

Trump kept the files – which included records from the Pentagon, CIA and National Security Agency – unsecured at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and thwarted official efforts to retrieve them, according to the indictment.

Trump is charged with 31 counts of “willful retention of national defense information,” each punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

He also faces charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice, making false statements and other offenses.

A judge is holding a hearing in Florida on Tuesday to set a trial date. Prosecutors are seeking a December start while Trump’s defense attorneys have asked for it to begin after the November 2024 presidential election.

Stormy hush money

A New York grand jury indicted Trump in March over hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Prosecutors say the money was paid prior to the 2016 election to silence Daniels over claims she had a tryst with Trump in 2006 – a year after he married Melania Trump.

Late in the campaign, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen arranged a payment of $130,000 (€115,816) to Daniels in exchange for her pledge of confidentiality.

That case, in which he faces 34 felony counts, is due to go to trial next March, in the middle of the Republican primary election season.

Georgia election meddling

Trump is also being investigated for pressuring officials in the southern state of Georgia to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory, including a taped phone call in which he asked the then-secretary of state to “find” enough votes to reverse the result.

The top prosecutor in Georgia’s Fulton County, Fani Willis, has assembled a special grand jury that could see Trump facing conspiracy charges connected to election fraud.

In unusually public remarks, the grand jury’s forewoman in February said the 23-member panel had recommended indictments of multiple people, including “certainly names that you would recognize.”

She did not say whether Trump was among them.

Other probes

Trump was found liable recently in a civil case for sexually abusing and defaming an American former magazine columnist, E. Jean Carroll, in 1996, and ordered to pay her $5 million (€4.45 million) in damages.

In New York, the state attorney general Letitia James has filed a civil suit against Trump and three of his children, accusing them of fraud by over-valuing assets to secure loans and then under-valuing them to minimize taxes.

James is seeking $250 million (€222.7 million) in penalties as well as banning Trump and his children from serving as executives at companies in New York.

Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

© AFP 2023