Donald Trump enjoyed powerful legal protections
in his four years as president.
Now that he has left office those shields have fallen away
and he faces a mountain of legal troubles as a private citizen.
He is the first president ever to be impeached twice and will
be tried by the Senate for inciting the mob that stormed
the US Capitol building.
Impeachment carries no criminal penalties.
Ordinarily, the main punishment would be removal from office.
But Trump has already left the White House.
He does face the threat of being banned
from holding public office again if the Senate convicts him.
A ban would prevent him from running for president again
in 2024.
It's unclear whether the Senate, which
is divided 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans,
will go that far.
Two-thirds of the Senate, 67 votes,
are needed to convict Trump.
A separate vote on banning him from office
would follow a conviction.
Trump has less support among Republican senators
than he did during his first impeachment,
but we don't know if the party will
turn on him in sufficient numbers to convict.
The mob was fed lies.
They were provoked by the president
and other powerful people.
Some Republicans are arguing that impeachment is designed
for people who are still in office,
and so therefore Trump cannot be convicted because his term has
ended.
However, there is historical precedent
for officials to face an impeachment trial even
after leaving their positions.
But impeachment may be the least of his worries.
Impeachment, witch hunt, impeachment.
As President Trump was immune from arrest and indictment
he also had the might of the Department of Justice
behind him.
Now, he's just a private citizen,
albeit a wealthy one with years of experience of court battles.
The primary threat he faces is a criminal investigation
into his tax affairs by the Manhattan District Attorney
Cyrus Vance.
As president, he battled to stop Vance
from accessing his tax records.
But now that he has left office that investigation
is set to accelerate.
He's also dealing with a pair of significant civil cases.
One is a civil probe by the New York Attorney General Letitia
James into Trump's businesses.
The second is a lawsuit filed by the Washington, DC Attorney
General Karl Racine, 2017 inauguration.
Then there are the lawsuits brought by private individuals,
like a defamation case against Trump
brought by E Jean Carol, a writer who
claims that he raped her.
He has denied the claim.
Hanging over all of this is the prospect
that the Department of Justice, under Joe Biden's
administration, could investigate
Trump on a variety of issues, like possible obstruction
of justice, campaign finance violations,
or an examination of his role in whipping up
the crowd that attacked Congress earlier this month.
Michael Sherwin has already indicated that Trump's role
could be investigated.
So now I'd like to invite John's wife, Jamie, to join us
as I grant John, I'm not sure you know this, a full pardon.
As president, Trump claimed the absolute power
to pardon himself.
In the end, he did not do so.
The last president to leave under a similar cloud
of potential legal liability, Richard Nixon,
was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.
Joe Biden, now president, has said he will not
do the same for Trump.