How Trump changed America’s legal landscape

President-elect Trump's legal issues dominated his 2024 presidential bid, where courtroom appearances were just as common as rallies and campaign stops. 

His cases also fundamentally altered America's legal landscape, redefining the law for presidents and opening a Pandora's box of questions that still stand to be litigated. 

Here’s how Trump’s cases changed the nation’s legal status quo. 

President faced criminal prosecution

Before Trump was indicted in New York, no former U.S. president had ever faced criminal charges. Then, three more prosecutions followed.  

The four cases — two federal and two state — kicked off one of the most unique presidential campaigns in modern history, where Trump sought to delay any proceedings all while prosecutors raced against the clock to try to reach his day in court.  

That clock ran out in November, when Americans delivered Trump a decisive win against Vice President Harris, catapulting him back to the nation’s highest office.  

Only his New York criminal case reached trial and a jury, after which he was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection to a hush money payment to an adult film actress to conceal their alleged affair ahead of the 2016 presidential election. 

The judge in that case is still deciding whether the conviction can stand given his imminent return to the White House, raising questions never weighed before.   

14th Amendment

Before Election Day, a growing chorus of voters and advocacy groups sought to disqualify Trump from the presidential race under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection ban.  

The 14th Amendment prevents individuals who took an oath to support the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection from returning to office, unless Congress votes to lift their disqualification. 

The Civil War-era provision, originally meant to keep ex-Confederates from returning to power, fell dormant for decades before challenges to Trump’s ballot eligibility began popping up nationwide, citing his role as an instigator in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. 

Colorado was the first state to disqualify Trump, followed by Maine and Illinois, but when the matter reached the Supreme Court, all nine justices sided with the former president. They ruled that only Congress has authority to enforce the 14th Amendment to disqualify federal candidates.  

“Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse,” read the unsigned opinion from the court. 

Special counsels

While the majority of Trump’s criminal cases began to unwind after his election victory, his federal classified documents case in Florida fell apart much earlier. 

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon tossed criminal charges against Trump accusing him of mishandling classified information in July — long before he was deemed president-elect — after finding that special counsel Jack Smith was not lawfully appointed.  

The ruling came as a shock to many legal scholars who viewed the law around appointing special counsels as largely settled.  

“For more than 20 years I was a federal judge. Do I look like somebody who would make that basic mistake about the law? I don’t think so,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in an interview on "NBC Nightly News" with Lester Holt following Cannon’s decision. 

Smith appealed Cannon’s decision, which wiped charges for Trump and his co-defendants, valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira. After Trump won, the Justice Department dropped the appeal in Trump’s case but said it would continue to pursue a different outcome for the other two defendants. 

The matter could still reach the Supreme Court. 

Presidential immunity

The Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, stemming from his federal election interference case, bolstered and fundamentally transformed the powers of the presidency.  

The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines that former presidents enjoy absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for exercising core constitutional powers and at least presumptive immunity for other official acts. Unofficial conduct can be prosecuted, but juries may not question the motivation behind a presidential decision, they said.   

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson that the ruling “reshapes the institution of the Presidency” and “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law.” 

The decision took a sledgehammer to Smith’s federal election subversion indictment against Trump and laid out an uncertain path for his other criminal cases. 

Presidential immunity did not apply to Trump’s Georgia case, which was on pause while a state appeals court weighed whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) should be disqualified from the case. The appeals panel did boot her office from the prosecution, which it has appealed.  

However, in New York, Trump’s judge upheld the jury’s conviction and ruled the outcome of the hush money case can withstand the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity test — a decision Trump could appeal.