Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who launched his 2024 presidential campaign late last year, may have to contend with multiple indictments as he tries to retake the White House.
Trump has already been indicted in New York on charges that he made hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
He also faces criminal investigations in Washington for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss and mishandling classified documents, a separate criminal probe in Georgia about his attempt to overturn his defeat in that state, and jurors are expected to soon decide in an unrelated civil case whether he lied about committing rape.
Trump’s tumultuous first candidacy and first term in office led many to see him as a president who threw away the playbook.
His candidacy began in 2015 with Trump and his wife Melania gliding down an escalator in Trump’s flagship Manhattan building, Trump Tower. It was an unorthodox campaign, full of what would traditionally be regarded as missteps. However, during the campaign and subsequent 2017-2021 presidency, Trump’s unusual political style tapped into discontent among many Americans to become a unique political phenomenon. He won the 2016 election in an upset over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Trump steered a right-wing populist course while maintaining unstinting support of fellow Republicans through most of his presidency.
Trump has elicited passionate support from many Americans, especially white men, Christian conservatives, rural residents and people without a college education. Critics accused Trump of pursuing policies built around “white grievance” in a nation with a growing non-white population.
Throughout his presidency, Trump was a prodigious Twitter user, firing off posts at all hours, sometimes with spelling and grammatical errors, but succeeding in communicating directly with the public. After the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, Twitter banned Trump.
On foreign policy, Trump abandoned international agreements including an Iran nuclear deal and a global climate change accord, alienated longtime U.S. allies, rolled back warmer ties with Cuba, assisted Israel, praised authoritarian foreign leaders and exhibited deference to longtime American adversary Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. He took key steps toward ending a 20-year U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.
Trump also curtailed immigration, focusing on the U.S.’ southern border with Mexico. He took a hardline approach to immigration across the border with Mexico. His “Stay in Mexico” policy forced tens of thousands of migrants to stay in Mexico while awaiting U.S. hearings on their asylum claims – a program that immigration advocates say put migrants at risk of kidnapping and other dangers in border cities.
Trump also allied himself with opponents to gun control policies, despite serving as President during one of the country’s worst school shootings. In 2018, 17 people were murdered at a Parkland, Florida high school. One month later, students who survived the deadly rampage held a nationally televised march in Washington to call for gun control legislation.
Racial tensions simmered under Trump. Civil unrest flared after incidents such as the police killing of a Black man named George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020. Protests against racism and police brutality spread to many cities. Trump promised to maintain “law and order.” He sent camouflage-clad federal agents into the streets of U.S. cities to confront protesters, including to clear the way for him to pose for a photo opportunity clutching the Bible in front of a church near the White House.
After a 2017 rally by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia led to clashes and the death of a female counter protester, Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides.”
Numerous women accused Trump of sexual assault, allegations he denied. Trump bragged in a 2005 audio tape made public in 2016 that he could grab women by their genitals with impunity because he was a star. His personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to charges related to hush money paid before the 2016 election to two women – adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal – who said they had sexual
encounters years earlier with Trump. Trump denied the relationships.
In 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic took hold, Trump led a disjointed U.S. government response – downplaying its seriousness, casting doubt on protective masks and predicting the pathogen’s miraculous disappearance – that many medical experts said worsened the public health crisis and cost lives. Trump ultimately was diagnosed with the virus and spent three nights in a military hospital. Still, Trump has given himself high marks for his actions.
His administration provided financial backing for COVID-19 vaccine development, but after the first vaccines won regulatory authorization it failed to plan for mass vaccinations to get the shots into people’s arms. The U.S. COVID-19 death toll surged past 400,000 on his last full day as president.
Trump was able to appoint three justices to the nine-member Supreme Court after promising as a candidate to pick nominees who would end the constitutional right to abortion recognized in 1973. In 2022, with his appointees delivering the crucial votes, the court overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent, leading numerous
Republican-led states to ban abortion.
Trump left office with his presidency in tatters and America’s democratic institutions dented even as the nation battled a deadly pandemic for which he delivered a botched response. In his final weeks in power, Trump made false claims of widespread voter fraud, became the first president ever impeached twice and stood accused of inciting a mob of supporters to rampage through the U.S. Capitol in a failed bid to prevent Congress from
formally certifying the 2020 victory of Joe Biden.
The Democratic-led House impeached him in 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he pressed Ukraine’s leader to investigate Biden and his son on unsubstantiated corruption accusations. The Senate acquitted him, thanks to Republican support.
The House impeached Trump again a week before he left office, this time for incitement of insurrection. He was acquitted by the Senate after he left office, again thanks to Republican senators.
At a rally that preceded the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol , Trump urged supporters to “fight like hell” and march on Congress to “stop the steal,” but the mob that subsequently stormed the Capitol failed to prevent Congress from formally certifying Biden’s election victory.
Even though court and state election officials rejected Trump’s false election claims, about two-thirds of Republican voters believe Biden’s victory was illegitimate, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.
Biden won the nationwide popular vote over Trump by about 7 million votes and secured a victory in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the election outcome by winning key swing states.
Trump became the first incumbent president to lose a re-election bid since George H.W. Bush in 1992. Trump also became the first president since Herbert Hoover in 1932 during the Great Depression to lose the White House and see his party lose both chambers of Congress in a single term.
Polls show that many Republicans would back another Trump presidential run, though support has dropped from last year. The political landscape has changed dramatically since he won the presidency in 2016 and some in his party are exhausted by the drama surrounding him.
EARLY YEARS
Trump was born on June 14, 1946, the fourth of five children and the son of real estate developer Fred Trump, who specialized in building and running middle-income apartments. His parents sent him to military school at age 13 to instill discipline. He later earned an economics degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
After taking a $1 million loan from his father in the 1970s, Trump erected his flagship building on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue in 1983 and called it Trump Tower. He would put up other residential and office buildings around the city – and the world – with his name prominently affixed.
Trump cultivated an image of a successful deal-maker, but experienced chronic financial losses, bankruptcies and business failures. Trump put his name on neckties, steaks, bottled water, cologne, an airline and even a real estate “university” that a few days before his inauguration in 2017 would pay $25 million to settle fraud claims brought by students.
Starting in 2003, Trump found broader fame hosting the reality TV shows “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice,” in which each episode ended with him dramatically ousting a contestant. “You’re fired,” Trump would said.
In 2005, he married former Slovenian model and future U.S. first lady Melania Knauss – more than 23 years his junior. Trump had five children with his three wives.
LEGAL WOES
On April 4, Trump became the first sitting or former U.S. president to face criminal charges, when prosecutors in Manhattan accused him of trying to conceal a violation of election laws during his successful 2016 campaign.
Trump was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records over allegations he orchestrated hush-money payments to port star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal before the 2016 U.S. election to suppress publication of their alleged sexual encounters with him.
Trump, the front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination in 2024, denies having an affair with Daniels but has acknowledged the payment.
The next hearing in the case is set for Dec. 4. Legal experts said a trial may not even get under way for a year, and that indictment or even a conviction would not legally prevent Trump from running for president.
