President-elect Donald Trump Tuesday’s projected victory has put legal cases in jeopardy as he prepares to take office.

Trump’s federal criminal cases in Florida and Washington, DC have already had uncertain fates. Special Counsel Jack Smith sought to revive the first — dismissed earlier this year — in an appeal to the 11th Circuit Court and re-indicted the latter following a Supreme Court ruling on official presidential acts in June. In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ election meddling case nearly stalled as an appeals court he agreed to determine whether her relationship with a former lead prosecutor disqualified her from the case. The president-elect’s sentencing in New York on 34 felonies is still scheduled for late November, following earlier delays.

Now, in the wake of his election victory, experts told Salon that Trump’s federal cases are essentially dead, and his Georgia trial is likely to follow suit, while his conviction in New York is unlikely to stand. to little more than a financial slap on the wrist.

“For the most part, his ongoing legal battles will go away,” said David Schultz, a professor of legal studies and political science at Hamline University in Minnesota.

“Given that he now has immunity in the Trump v. United States (Supreme Court) case, this potentially frees up Trump to do an awful lot in his second term as president of the United States in ways that he would have been limited. because of the fear of running for re-election or because of a possible criminal prosecution,” he added in a phone interview.

The charges in Trump’s federal case in Florida, which accused him of illegally keeping national security documents after he left office and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them, were dismissed in July. U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon ruled in her dismissal that Smith was unconstitutionally appointed to oversee the case, in violation of the Constitution’s Appointments and Appropriations Clauses. However, Smith appealed that dismissal days later to the 11th Circuit Court in an effort to reinstate the case.

Smith’s case against Trump in D.C., accusing him of trying to undermine President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and obstruct Congressional certification of the results on Jan. 6, 2021, was dealt a major blow in July when the Supreme Court. pent-up the former president was largely immune from official acts carried out under his “core constitutional powers” while in office.

That decision threw the burden of determining which indicted documents constituted official records back into the court of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. Smith filed a superseding indictment against Trump that kept the same four counts in August that sought to avoid immunity battles by dropping allegations about the then-president’s communications with White House officials.

Both cases will be dismissed once Trump returns to the White House, former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani said in a telephone interview. Federal prosecutors, who have long had internal guidelines against prosecuting a sitting president, are likely to file motions to dismiss the case and appeal. If Smith’s office doesn’t, Trump can direct his new attorney general pick to fire the special counsel and kill the cases that way.

“It’s just a question of whether those cases will be dismissed in November or December or January,” Rahmani told Salon. “But Jack Smith should dismiss those cases.”

Given the federal government’s practice against prosecuting a sitting president, Rahmani said he expects DA Willis to take a similar approach in the Georgia case. Bennett Gershman, a law professor at Pace University and a former New York prosecutor, said, however, that such an outcome is unlikely.

“The Georgia case will continue to be prosecuted by Fani Willis, who was re-elected yesterday, and there is no reason to believe she will drop the case,” Gershman said in an email to Salon. “In fact, there’s every reason to believe it will move forward aggressively.”

The Fulton County District Attorney charged Trump and 18 others, some of whom later accepted plea deals or dropped charges, in an expanded racketeering indictment, accusing them of conspiring to overturn the election results of Georgia since 2020. The case derailed in the spring CHARGES that Willis benefited financially from her romantic relationship with a special prosecutor she hired to work on the case. Although Trump’s legal team’s attempt to disqualify her over the claims failedthe decision is now on appeal with the lower court proceedings on hold as they proceed.

Schultz said he expects Trump’s legal team to seek a stay on the case until after his presidency because Trump will be “too distracted” by his presidency to proceed with the prosecution once he takes office.

Rahmani added that the case cannot reasonably be interrupted during Trump’s presidency because he, like any other criminal defendant, is entitled to a speedy trial. If Willis goes forward with the case, he will likely have to dismiss it and refile it later, but by then the statute of limitations on the prosecution will have expired.

What comes out of Trump’s criminal case in New York is more complicated because a jury has already convicted him, he said.

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The president-elect was convict in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a conspiracy to cover up a hush money payment to an adult film star, with his sentencing originally scheduled for mid-July at the conclusion of a characterized trial through violations of order, attacks on uninvolved parties and unstable defense. Despite delays in his sentencing date — first delayed in mid-September before New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan rescheduled it again for Nov. 26 — proceedings in Trump’s criminal case in New York will continue.

Merchan said he would rule on Trump’s motion to vacate the guilty verdict based on Trump v. United States, which also barred the introduction of official records evidence during criminal proceedings, on Nov. 12, according to CNN. Trump’s legal team argues that the introduction of evidence, such as Trump’s tweets while in office and communications with former White House adviser Hope Hicks, during the New York proceedings should now be grounds for impeachment or retrial.

“Obviously, there will be strident arguments from Trump’s lawyers, either to delay sentencing until after Trump leaves office in four years, or to dismiss the case outright. Gershman said. “But I think the arguments to delay or overturn the sentence are without merit. The execution of the sentence will almost certainly be delayed while Trump appeals the conviction, and that will be a long process.”

Rahmani said it was always expected that Trump would eventually escape prison (he could be sentenced to up to four years) because his charges were the lowest possible offenses in New York, he has no criminal record and would be almost impossible to close an ex. president with Secret Service protection.

“Now that he’s president-elect, it’s even less likely,” Rahmani said. “Judge Merchan didn’t jail Trump for 10 full violations of his gag order, he’s not going to convict him at any point. He will probably be fined and that will be the end of it.”

While Schultz agreed and raised the possibility of “minor probation,” Gershman argued that Merchan could impose a prison sentence of six to 24 months, citing Merchan’s conviction of former Trump Organization chief financial officer , Allen Weisselberg, to five months for “much less heinous behavior than Trump’s.”

Asked what he took away from how Trump’s various legal battles have played out over the past few months, each legal expert named different points of contention.

Gershman condemned the “repetitive legalese, frivolous arguments and gamesmanship” that Trump’s legal team engaged in to delay his cases and the role of the Supreme Court and Justice Cannon in making the lawyers’ gambit a “huge success” . Rahmani lamented the years it took Willis and Smith to air their allegations, as well as the scandal in the middle of Willis’ case.

Schultz noted Trump’s effectiveness in leveraging cases and proceedings to his advantage in fundraising and campaigning.

“Democrats made a big mistake in thinking that his legal problems would be the death of him, that there would be multiple trials, that he would be convicted multiple times, or that he would be so bogged down with his criminal trials that eventually will not be able to organize an effective process. campaign,” he said. “In fact, all the evidence suggests that he turned all those charges into assets.”