Criminal Matters

On April 25, 2022, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron held Donald Trump in civil contempt of court for failing to comply with a subpoena issued by New York Attorney General Letitia James as part of her office's civil fraud investigation into the Trump Organization's business practices. The judge imposed a fine of $10,000 per…

Peter Navarro, a senior White House trade adviser under Donald Trump, was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress on September 7, 2023, for defying a subpoena issued by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. A federal jury in Washington, D.C. returned the guilty verdict after…

Steve Bannon, who served as chief strategist in the Trump White House from January to August 2017 and remained a prominent political ally of Donald Trump, was indicted, convicted, and imprisoned for criminal contempt of Congress after refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6,…

Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, was the central figure in three separate criminal proceedings between 2022 and 2024, each of which raised questions about the scope of prosecutorial ambition directed at the Trump family business versus the Trump family itself.

On June 8, 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a 37-count indictment against Donald Trump in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida (Case No. 9:23-cr-80101) for retaining classified national defense documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them. A…

On August 1, 2023, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment charging Donald Trump with four felony counts related to his conduct between the November 2020 election and the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan as Case No. 23-cr-257. Trump was arraigned on…

On August 14, 2023, a Fulton County grand jury indicted Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants on 41 counts arising from an alleged conspiracy to overturn Georgia's 2020 presidential election results. The indictment alleged a coordinated effort involving pressuring state officials to reverse certified results, creating false slates of…

On August 21, 2018, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's longtime personal attorney and fixer, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to eight federal charges: five counts of willful tax evasion, one count of making false statements to a financial institution, one count of causing an unlawful corporate…

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, both Soviet-born businessmen and associates of Rudy Giuliani, were arrested on October 9, 2019, at Dulles International Airport while attempting to board a one-way flight to Vienna. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged them with conspiracy to funnel foreign money into U.S. political…

Paul Manafort served as chairman of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign from June to August 2016. On October 30, 2017, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office indicted Manafort on charges related to his political consulting work in Ukraine, which predated his time on the Trump campaign but raised questions about the financial and…

Between 2017 and 2024, an extraordinary number of people in Donald Trump's political and business orbit were criminally charged, convicted, or pleaded guilty to federal and state crimes. No prior American president has had this many close associates face criminal prosecution during or in connection with their time in office. The scope of…

Elliott Broidy, a top Republican fundraiser and former deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, pleaded guilty on October 20, 2020, to a federal charge of conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent while lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests. Broidy was one of three…

Michael Flynn served as National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump for 24 days, from January 20 to February 13, 2017. He resigned after reports revealed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period.

On February 23, 2018, Rick Gates, Donald Trump's deputy campaign chairman during the 2016 presidential election, pleaded guilty to two federal charges brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office: conspiracy against the United States and making false statements to the FBI. The charges arose from Gates's work alongside Paul Manafort…

George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, pleaded guilty on October 5, 2017, to making materially false statements to FBI agents about his contacts with individuals connected to the Russian government. He was the first member of the Trump campaign to be charged and the first to plead…

On May 30, 2024, a Manhattan jury unanimously convicted Donald J. Trump of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, making him the first former or sitting U.S. president to be convicted of a felony.

On December 6, 2022, a Manhattan jury found The Trump Corporation and The Trump Payroll Corp. guilty on all 17 felony counts for their role in a 15-year scheme to defraud federal, New York State, and New York City tax authorities. The scheme ran from approximately 2005 to 2018 and involved structuring executive compensation to avoid tax…

On August 18, 2022, Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, pleaded guilty to 15 felony counts in a New York State case arising from a 15-year tax fraud scheme. The charges included grand larceny in the second degree, criminal tax fraud in the third and fourth degrees, offering a false…