Lawsuits, indictments, and legal proceedings
The D.C. Circuit ordered a stop to construction of Trump's $400 million ballroom on the site of the demolished East Wing, ruling 2-1 that redesigning the White House is Congress's call — 'not a matter for Executive self-help.'
A D.C. Circuit panel declined on July 28, 2026 to block Trump's executive order asserting federal control over mail-in ballots, ruling only that a challenge was premature — leaving the fate of a sweeping, likely unconstitutional attempt to police voting rolls before the midterms in the hands of the Supreme Court.
Trump and his Justice Department — now run by his former criminal defense lawyer — asked the Supreme Court to throw out the $83 million defamation verdict Carroll won, arguing that because Trump smeared her while president, he is immune and taxpayers should stand in for him as the defendant.
A DHS interim final rule announced July 27, 2026 lets immigration officers send asylum applicants straight to court — where judges can dismiss their cases on paperwork alone — by removing the longstanding right to a non-adversarial interview with an asylum officer.
In Trump v. Barbara, a cross-ideological 6-3 Supreme Court majority struck down Executive Order 14160 and upheld birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. Chief Justice Roberts, joined by all three liberal justices and Justice Barrett, ruled that children born in the United States are citizens regardless of their parents' immigration status — reaffirming a 128-year-old precedent Trump's team had tried to erase.
In a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the Supreme Court overruled Humphrey's Executor v. United States — the 1935 precedent that protected independent agency commissioners from politically motivated firings — and upheld Trump's removal of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. Justice Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the majority had given the president 'a power unknown even to the English Crown.'
John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser turned critic, pleaded guilty to one count of unlawfully retaining classified information — the first conviction in Trump's stated campaign of retribution, prosecuted under the same statute Trump himself was indicted under in 2023 before his case was dismissed.
In a 6-3 decision in Mullin v. Doe, the Supreme Court let the Trump administration terminate Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, holding that federal courts cannot meaningfully review the Homeland Security secretary's decision. Justice Kagan dissented that Trump's own statements about Haiti 'fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones,' that race drove the policy.
A divided D.C. Circuit panel — two Trump appointees over a Biden-appointee dissent — vacated a district court order and cleared the way for Trump to use 'expedited removal' anywhere in the United States, allowing federal agents to deport people without an immigration judge, a lawyer, or any meaningful hearing.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told House appropriators the Justice Department was abandoning the $1.776 billion fund Trump had extracted from his own DOJ in a self-dealing IRS settlement, but the part of the deal barring the IRS from auditing Trump, his family, and his businesses remains in force.
Trump is poised to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion 'weaponization' fund — controlled by a commission he can fire at will — that can hand taxpayer money to nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants and entities tied to Trump himself, with no obligation to disclose how decisions are made.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that ICE 'likely illegally' deported Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata to the Democratic Republic of Congo after the Congolese government had explicitly notified ICE in writing that it could not accept her because she required medical care for diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypothyroidism. The judge ordered the administration to bring her back.
The Justice Department filed 12 new denaturalization cases in a single day and bragged it would surpass the Biden administration's four-year total within a week, while Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told CBS that naturalized citizens 'should be worried.'
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled 2-1 on May 8 that Trump's 10 percent across-the-board global tariff, imposed in February under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, was unlawful. The ruling — won by a small spice retailer, a toy company, and the state of Washington — is the latest in a string of federal court losses for Trump's signature tariff agenda, and it forces the administration to scramble for new statutory authority to keep the duties in place.
The Justice Department deployed the Westfall Act to ask the Supreme Court to substitute the federal government for Trump as defendant in E. Jean Carroll's defamation case — a maneuver that would make the $83.3 million judgment disappear, since the U.S. government cannot be sued for defamation.
Judge Melissa DuBose ordered an ethics review of the Trump administration after DHS issued a press release branding her a 'Biden activist judge' for releasing a man whose homicide warrant ICE had ordered the Justice Department to hide from her court.
After ICE raids in downtown LA triggered street protests, Trump invoked 10 U.S.C. § 12406 to federalize 4,000 California National Guard troops without Governor Newsom's consent — the first such federalization over a governor's objection since Lyndon Johnson sent troops to Alabama in 1965 to protect civil-rights marchers — and ordered 700 active-duty Marines into the city. A federal judge later ruled the federalization illegal.
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to fly Venezuelan men — and at least one Maryland man with explicit court protection from removal — to El Salvador's CECOT prison, then defied a federal judge's order to turn the planes around and a unanimous Supreme Court order to bring one of them back.
Plainclothes ICE agents arrested Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil — a lawful permanent resident married to a U.S. citizen — at his apartment in Morningside Heights and shipped him to a Louisiana detention center for participating in last year's Gaza protests. Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally signed a memo invoking a McCarthy-era provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that lets him deport non-citizens whose presence is deemed to have 'serious adverse foreign policy consequences,' opening the first major test case of Trump's deport-the-protesters program.
Hours after his second inauguration, Trump signed Executive Order 14160 directing federal agencies to stop recognizing the U.S. citizenship of children born on American soil to undocumented parents or to parents on temporary visas — a direct attack on the 14th Amendment that was blocked by every court that reviewed it.
On his first day in office, Trump issued sweeping pardons and commutations for approximately 1,500 people charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, including individuals convicted of violent assaults on police officers.
Judge Juan Merchan sentenced Donald Trump to an unconditional discharge in the New York hush money case, imposing no jail time, probation, or fine, making Trump the first convicted felon to assume the U.S. presidency.
Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the federal classified documents case against Trump, ruling that Special Counsel Jack Smith's appointment was unconstitutional, a decision that was widely criticized by legal scholars.
In a 6-3 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents enjoy absolute immunity for 'core' constitutional acts and presumptive immunity for all other official acts — a doctrine found nowhere in the Constitution and explicitly designed to delay Jack Smith's election-subversion case past the 2024 election.
In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the Supreme Court granted presidents sweeping immunity for 'official acts' — a doctrine found nowhere in the Constitution that gutted the federal January 6 prosecution and, in Justice Sotomayor's words, made the president 'a king above the law.'
A Manhattan jury convicted Donald Trump on all 34 counts of falsifying business records, making him the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a felony.
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed Colorado's removal of Trump from the state's primary ballot, ruling that states cannot unilaterally disqualify federal candidates under the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause.
After a months-long bench trial, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ordered Donald Trump and his co-defendants to disgorge $355 million in fraud proceeds — a figure that grew to over $464 million with pre-judgment interest — and barred Trump from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation for three years. Engoron's 93-page opinion called the defendants' 'complete lack of contrition and remorse' 'pathological' and said they were highly likely to commit fraud again.
A federal jury ordered Donald Trump to pay E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in damages for defaming her after she accused him of sexual assault, one of the largest defamation verdicts against an individual in U.S. history.
A New York judge ruled that Donald Trump committed fraud for years by inflating the value of his real estate assets on financial statements, ordering the dissolution of some of his business entities and setting the stage for a trial on remaining claims.
A Fulton County, Georgia grand jury indicted Trump and 18 co-defendants under state racketeering laws for a sprawling conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, including Trump's recorded call pressuring the secretary of state to 'find' votes.
Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with four federal counts related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, alleging a broad conspiracy involving fake electors, pressure on the Vice President, and the weaponization of the Justice Department.
Special Counsel Jack Smith unsealed a 37-count federal indictment charging Trump with willful retention of national defense information, obstruction of justice, and making false statements related to classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
A Manhattan grand jury indicted Donald Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, making him the first former president ever indicted on criminal charges.
The House Select Committee voted unanimously to refer Donald Trump to the Justice Department on four criminal charges, including insurrection and obstruction, concluding that he was the 'central cause' of the January 6 attack.
FBI agents executed a search warrant at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, seizing boxes of classified documents including materials marked top secret and sensitive compartmented information.
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that the U.S. Constitution does not protect a right to abortion, overturning Roe v. Wade after nearly 50 years. The majority was supplied by Trump's three appointees — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — each of whom had told the Senate under oath that Roe was settled precedent. Trump immediately took credit, calling Dobbs 'the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation.'
The House Select Committee investigating the Capitol attack launched its public hearings, presenting evidence over multiple sessions that Trump orchestrated a multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 election.
The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack issued subpoenas to members of Trump's inner circle, including former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Steve Bannon, and other key figures, setting up major legal confrontations over executive privilege.
The Biden Justice Department reversed the Trump-era DOJ position and concluded that the House Ways and Means Committee was entitled to obtain Trump's tax returns, ending a years-long legal battle.
Allen Weisselberg, the longtime CFO of the Trump Organization, was indicted along with the company itself on charges of running a 15-year tax fraud scheme involving unreported employee compensation.
The Senate voted 57-43 to convict Trump for incitement of insurrection, but fell short of the two-thirds majority needed. Seven Republicans crossed party lines to vote guilty, the most bipartisan impeachment vote in history.
The Manhattan District Attorney's office expanded its investigation of the Trump Organization into a full criminal probe, examining potential bank and insurance fraud, tax fraud, and falsification of business records.
The House of Representatives impeached President Trump for the second time, charging him with 'incitement of insurrection' for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, making him the only president in American history to be impeached twice.
Following a rally where Trump urged supporters to 'fight like hell,' thousands stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's electoral victory.
In an Oval Office meeting with attorney John Eastman, Trump pressed Vice President Pence to reject certified electoral votes on January 6. When Pence refused on legal grounds, Trump publicly attacked him as a 'wimp' — and tweeted that Pence lacked 'courage' minutes after being told the Capitol had been breached and the mob was chanting 'Hang Mike Pence.'
In a recorded hour-long phone call, President Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to 'find 11,780 votes' to overturn Biden's victory in the state, a call that would later form the basis of criminal charges.
In the weeks following his election loss, Trump personally pressured state legislators, election officials, and governors in key battleground states to overturn certified results and declare him the winner.
The Republican-controlled Senate voted to acquit President Trump on both articles of impeachment, with Senator Mitt Romney becoming the only Republican to vote for conviction.
The House of Representatives impeached President Trump on two articles — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — making him the third U.S. president to be impeached.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted to formalize the impeachment inquiry into President Trump over his efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating political rival Joe Biden.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's 448-page report documented a 'sweeping and systematic' Russian interference operation that the Trump campaign 'expected to benefit from,' identified ten separate episodes in which Trump may have obstructed justice, and explicitly stated it did 'not exonerate' him. Attorney General William Barr spent the morning of its release publicly mischaracterizing it before Congress and the public could read it.
Under court supervision and after a state lawsuit detailed 'a shocking pattern of illegality,' the Donald J. Trump Foundation agreed to dissolve, distribute its remaining $1.78 million in assets to other charities at the New York Attorney General's direction, and submit Trump and his children to ongoing legal restrictions on charitable activity in the state.
Trump's longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for campaign finance violations, tax evasion, and lying to Congress, telling the judge he committed the crimes 'at the direction of' the president.
The day after the 2018 midterm elections, Trump forced Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign, punishing him for recusing himself from the Russia investigation and installing a loyalist as acting attorney general to oversee the Mueller probe.
Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court by a 50-48 vote nine days after Christine Blasey Ford testified that he had sexually assaulted her in 1982. The 'supplemental FBI investigation' the Trump White House cited as exonerating him was, a 2024 Senate report concluded, tightly controlled by that same White House — the 4,500-tip public tip line was forwarded straight to Trump's lawyers without investigation, and key witnesses were never interviewed.
Seven months into his presidency, Trump issued his first pardon — to former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had been convicted of criminal contempt for defying a federal judge's order to stop racially profiling Latino drivers. Trump skipped the DOJ pardon review process entirely, pardoned Arpaio before he was even sentenced, and set the template he would use to pardon Manafort, Stone, Flynn, and ultimately the January 6 defendants.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and any links to the Trump campaign, launching a two-year investigation that would dominate Trump's presidency.
President Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey while the FBI was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential ties to the Trump campaign, triggering a constitutional crisis.
Trump cleared the Oval Office of other officials and asked FBI Director James Comey to end the investigation into Michael Flynn, telling him 'I hope you can let this go' — a request Comey documented in a memo that became central evidence in the obstruction of justice case.
National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was forced to resign after it was revealed he had lied to Vice President Pence about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak regarding U.S. sanctions.
As multiple officials confirmed intelligence intercepts showed Michael Flynn lied about discussing sanctions with Russia's ambassador, senior White House aides refused to defend him on national television and Trump remained conspicuously silent.
Just one week into his presidency, Trump signed an executive order banning entry from seven Muslim-majority countries, triggering immediate chaos at airports and a wave of federal court challenges.
In the weeks following the Access Hollywood tape, more than a dozen women came forward publicly to accuse Trump of unwanted kissing, groping, and sexual assault, directly contradicting his claim that the tape was mere 'locker room talk.'
Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and campaign chair Paul Manafort met at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer and an ex-Soviet intelligence operative after an email pitched the meeting as 'part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump.' Trump Jr. replied 'I love it.'
Trump repeatedly claimed that federal judge Gonzalo Curiel could not fairly preside over the Trump University fraud case because of his 'Mexican heritage,' prompting Paul Ryan to call it 'the textbook definition of a racist comment.'
Multiple fraud lawsuits against Trump University gained national attention during the Republican primary, with former students alleging they were deceived into paying up to $35,000 for worthless real estate courses at what turned out to be an unlicensed institution.
Donald Trump launched Trump University, a for-profit real estate training program that would later face multiple fraud lawsuits and result in a $25 million settlement after thousands of students alleged they were deceived.
Construction of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue relied on a crew of undocumented Polish immigrants who worked 12-hour shifts for sub-standard wages, demolishing the Bonwit Teller building to make way for Trump's signature skyscraper.
Donald Trump, Fred Trump, and Trump Management signed a consent decree with the Department of Justice to settle charges of systematic racial discrimination in housing, agreeing to a set of reforms without admitting guilt.
The Department of Justice filed a civil rights suit against Trump, his father Fred, and their company for refusing to rent to Black tenants in 39 buildings across New York City.
Roy Cohn — Joseph McCarthy's henchman turned New York mob fixer — became Trump's mentor in the 1970s, teaching him the tactics that still define him: attack relentlessly, admit nothing, deny everything, counter-sue, weaponize the media, and never, ever apologize.
