Donald Trump is at a crucial point in his personal history. For him, the outcome of the election will either be a series of criminal prosecutions likely to lead to prison, or some legal hassles that he can largely or completely dismiss.

A Kamala Harris victory next week would leave Trump with no new cards to play against the massive criminal case already pending against him. We could expect turnover at the highest levels of the Justice Department, up to and including the DA. General Merrick Garland. But the new administration would almost certainly retain special counsel Jack Smith, who has earned high marks for aggressively pursuing Trump’s alleged federal crimes.

That would allow Smith to continue pursuing the two prosecutions he brought against the former president: one for his role in trying to rig the 2020 election, culminating in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol; the other for stealing government documents and obstructing authorities’ efforts to retrieve them from his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.

Legally, the latter is the strongest of all the criminal cases against Trump. The evidence is overwhelming that Trump ran off with documents he had no right to possess as a former president and then engaged in a nearly two-year suppression of perfectly legitimate efforts by the federal government to recover them. His alleged obstruction included lying about his compliance with a federal subpoena and ordering his co-conspirators to hide documents he knew the government wanted. And for all we know, his careless and selfish handling of sensitive national security information could have put US assets at grave risk.

What makes the case particularly strong is that anyone who engaged in similar behavior would undoubtedly face serious charges; indeed, the Justice Department routinely prosecutes people for mishandling a small portion of the material Trump appropriated. So no one can legitimately argue that it was singled out for political purposes or that the case pushes the legal envelope in any way.

However, Trump was able to avoid justice in the case due to a series of partisan rulings by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who ultimately ordered the case dismissed on the grounds that Smith’s appointment lacked the authority corresponding to the Congress. That ruling is now before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is likely to overturn it and could order Cannon’s recusal. And while a determined district court judge can find many ways to make the charges go away, Cannon would face even more scrutiny and fewer recourse if her boss loses her bid to return to the White House .

In short, the case should proceed to a conviction. And the likely sentence under federal guidelines (from which courts can depart) appears to be close to 20 years.

If the dossier of documents is the most open and shut against Trump, the Jan. 6 case is the most important because it goes to the heart of his wrongdoing as president. But Trump got another lucky break here, not from the district court — Tanya Chutkan is a no-nonsense federal judge who quickly moved the case — but from the US Supreme Court. The conservative justices threw a monkey wrench into the case with their opinion granting broad presidential immunity from prosecution, weighing its implications for at least another year.

When the dust settles, however, the evidence is more than strong enough to lead to a conviction on the core charges that are likely to remain. And judging by the sentences imposed on the most guilty of the soldiers on the ground on January 6, Trump would be looking at years in prison in this case as well.

The two state files against the former president remain. In New York, Trump is due to be sentenced in less than a month on his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. And in Georgia, a racketeering case stemming from the Jan. 6 plot is in a freeze of sorts as state courts try to determine whether Fulton County Dist. Atty. Fani Willis and her office must be recused on ethical grounds.

The future of the Georgia case is uncertain in any scenario. But if Trump loses the election, he will be sentenced to Manhattan. As a result, he is likely to serve little, if any, time in custody, but may likely count on a long term of probation, which itself involves a significant deprivation of liberty.

Finally, the possibility remains that Trump could emerge as a defendant in other state cases involving conspiracies to overturn elections by appointing fraudulent voters. His involvement in those schemes is a matter of record.

Add it all up, and the bottom line is that Trump will be forced to endure one criminal trial after another, and the possibility that prison sentences will only be suspended for proceedings in other cases.

But what if Trump emerges victorious next week? The difference to him alone would be staggering. Reclaiming the White House would amount to a free pass for a presidency and post-presidency that have been nothing short of a crime spree.

First, as head of the executive branch, Trump could and will simply order the Justice Department to drop the two pending federal cases. Indeed, Trump announced last week that he would fire the special counsel.in two seconds” of taking office and pointed to the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling as giving him the power to do so. That would bring all of Smith’s work to a standstill.

As for New York, even as president, Trump would have no official authority to order Manhattan Dist. Atty. Alvin Bragg to retire. But he would likely argue in federal court that a state cannot pursue a criminal case against — much less incarcerate — a sitting president. And the Supreme Court is likely to find and find such a principle implicit in the Constitution: the federal government could hardly function if the states had this power.

In that case, any sentence in New York, including probation, would only be served after Trump is out of office, at which point it could be a very different country. For starters, Trump did signaled his intention to bring federal charges against Bragg.

Ultimately, a Trump presidency likely precludes any possibility of being included in any additional state prosecutions. Indeed, it could spell the end of those prosecutions altogether.

Trump’s entire campaign to regain the presidency can be seen as a strange gamble to evade responsibility for a series of serious and obvious crimes. If he wins, he will consider it a popular verdict that he is above the law, regardless of any provision in the Constitution. And as a practical matter, he will be right.

Harry Litman is the host of the film Talking Feds Podcast. and “Speaking San Diego” speaker series. @harrylitman