Trump Getting Sued: Carroll, Manhattan, and Second-Term Suits

Donald Trump is a party to an unusually large and varied body of litigation: a felony conviction in New York, two federal criminal cases that were dropped after he won the 2024 election, a dismissed state RICO case in Georgia, two jury verdicts for E. Jean Carroll totaling more than $88 million before interest, a New York civil fraud finding that still stands even after an appeals court threw out the money penalty, and hundreds of lawsuits challenging his second-term executive actions. Trackers of Trump lawsuits counted between roughly 230 and 800 active or recently resolved matters as of mid-2026, depending on scope.¹²

What follows is where each major case stands.

The E. Jean Carroll Verdicts

Two juries have found Trump liable in cases brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. The first, in 2023, found him liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the mid-1990s and defaming her, awarding $5 million. A second jury in 2024 awarded $83.3 million for additional defamation.

On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court declined without noted dissent to hear Trump’s appeal of the $5 million verdict, effectively ending that case. The Second Circuit had upheld the verdict in December 2024, and the full appellate bench denied rehearing in June 2025.³ Trump deposited $5.5 million into a court-controlled account in 2023, and Carroll is expected to receive those funds now that the appeal is exhausted.⁴

The $83.3 million verdict is still on appeal. The Second Circuit upheld the award but allowed Trump to delay payment while his appeal proceeds, and as of late June 2026 no Supreme Court petition in that case had been filed.⁵⁶ With interest, Trump’s combined potential liability to Carroll exceeds $100 million.⁴ Separately, the Justice Department opened an investigation into Carroll in May 2026.

The Manhattan Criminal Conviction

A Manhattan jury convicted Trump on May 30, 2024, on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the case involving hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. On January 10, 2025, Judge Juan Merchan sentenced him to an unconditional discharge: no prison time, no fine, no probation. The felony conviction stays on his record.⁷⁸ Trump’s legal team said at sentencing that it would appeal, a process that could take years.⁹

The Federal Criminal Cases

Special Counsel Jack Smith brought two federal cases in 2023: one for efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the January 6 Capitol attack, the other for retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Neither reached trial.

In July 2024, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case, ruling Smith had been unlawfully appointed as special counsel.¹⁰ That same month, the Supreme Court held in Trump v. United States that former presidents have absolute immunity for actions within their core constitutional authority and at least presumptive immunity for other official acts, sending the January 6 case back to the trial court to sort official from unofficial conduct.¹¹

After the 2024 election, Smith dropped both prosecutions, citing Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president.¹² Charges against co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira were dismissed in February 2026, and Judge Cannon permanently blocked release of Smith’s final report on the documents investigation that same month.¹⁰

The Georgia Election Case

The Fulton County RICO case charging Trump and co-defendants with conspiring to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election result was dismissed in full on November 26, 2025. The case had already been derailed when the Georgia Court of Appeals disqualified District Attorney Fani Willis over a conflict of interest involving prosecutor Nathan Wade; the state’s highest court declined to hear her appeal in September 2025.¹³

Replacement prosecutor Peter Skandalakis concluded there was “no realistic prospect” of bringing a sitting president to trial in state court, said the alleged conduct was “conceived in Washington, D.C., not the State of Georgia,” and found the evidence against the remaining co-defendants fell short of what a conviction would require. Judge Scott McAfee granted the motion to drop the case.¹⁴¹⁵

The New York Civil Fraud Case

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump, his eldest sons, and the Trump Organization for inflating asset values over a decade to secure favorable loans and deals. After a three-month trial, Judge Arthur Engoron found the defendants liable and imposed a penalty that grew past $500 million with interest.

A New York appellate court threw out the money penalty in August 2025, calling it “excessive” and a potential violation of constitutional protections against severe punishment, but upheld the underlying fraud finding against Trump, his sons, and the business.¹⁶ Nonmonetary penalties remain: a three-year ban on Trump serving as a director of any New York company and a three-year prohibition on obtaining loans from banks with a New York branch.¹⁷ Both sides have appealed to the New York Court of Appeals, with Trump seeking to reverse the fraud finding and James seeking to reinstate the money penalty.¹⁸

The $10 Billion IRS Lawsuit and Settlement

Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns by a contractor. The suit was filed in the Southern District of Florida before Judge Kathleen Williams. In late May 2026, Trump voluntarily dismissed it. The Justice Department almost immediately created a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate people who said they had been politically targeted under the previous administration, and the settlement included tax benefits for Trump, his family, and his businesses.¹⁹

Ninety-three House Democrats filed an amicus brief arguing Trump was effectively both plaintiff and defendant and that the settlement violated Congress’s power of the purse.²⁰ They called a clause permanently barring the government from investigating the Trump family’s past tax returns a “super-pardon.” Representative Jamie Raskin introduced the BLANCHE Act, which would make it illegal for a sitting president to receive damages or attorney fees from the government through settlement.²¹

Judge Williams reopened the case on May 29, 2026, after 35 former federal judges petitioned the court, alleging the settlement was “premised on deception.” She ordered Trump’s attorneys to respond to what she called “grievous allegations.”¹⁹ Trump’s legal team responded on June 12, 2026, arguing the judge’s authority ended at dismissal and threatening to petition the Eleventh Circuit if she formally reopened the proceeding.²² Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in early June 2026 that the $1.8 billion fund is “dead,” though the remaining settlement terms, including the permanent block on tax return investigations, still stand.²¹

Lawsuits Challenging Second-Term Executive Actions

The largest volume of litigation involving Trump isn’t against him personally. It’s against his administration, over executive orders and agency actions. Plaintiffs include coalitions of Democratic state attorneys general, the NAACP, ACLU, AFL-CIO, federal employee unions, law firms, and individual workers and residents. The Associated Press counted 150 cases in which administration actions had been partially or fully blocked by courts as of January 2026.²³ The Supreme Court has intervened repeatedly, issuing 17 stays or orders vacating lower-court decisions that had blocked administration actions, while affirming lower courts against the administration in 2 cases.²

Federal Workforce and DOGE

Federal employee unions, cities, and nonprofits have sued over mass layoffs and restructuring driven by the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco found that the Office of Personnel Management had illegally directed six agencies to terminate probationary employees and ordered more than 16,000 workers reinstated. The Supreme Court later vacated that reinstatement order, leaving the question of whether the firings were lawful unresolved.²⁴ In October 2025, Judge Susan Illston blocked the administration from issuing reduction-in-force notices to roughly 4,000 federal employees during a government shutdown, calling the layoffs “both illegal and in excess of authority.”²⁵

The Federal Funding Freeze

Within days of the second-term inauguration, the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo pausing nearly all federal grant assistance, hitting programs from Medicaid to disaster preparedness to veteran homeless care. A coalition of 23 state attorneys general led by New York’s Letitia James sued on January 28, 2025. A court granted a temporary restraining order three days later and a preliminary injunction on March 6, 2025.²⁶ The First Circuit largely upheld that order in March 2026. The administration argues the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which limits a president’s ability to withhold appropriated funds, is itself unconstitutional. Under pressure from lawmakers, the administration did release $5 billion in withheld public school funding in July 2025.²⁷

Birthright Citizenship

On January 20, 2025, Trump signed an executive order aiming to deny U.S. citizenship to children born in the country to parents without citizenship or permanent immigration status. Federal courts in New Hampshire, Washington, Maryland, and Massachusetts issued nationwide preliminary injunctions blocking it, citing the Fourteenth Amendment and United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898).²⁸ The Supreme Court heard argument in Trump v. Barbara on April 1, 2026, and had not ruled as of late June 2026.²⁹

Alien Enemies Act Deportations

The administration invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport people it alleged were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. In Trump v. J.G.G., decided April 7, 2025, the Supreme Court vacated lower-court restraining orders blocking deportations, holding that challenges under the Act must be brought as habeas petitions in the district where a person is confined, not as class actions in Washington, D.C. The Court did affirm that individuals facing deportation under the Act are entitled to judicial review of whether they actually qualify as “alien enemies” and to advance notice sufficient to seek relief.³⁰

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who had been granted “withholding of removal” by an immigration judge, was arrested by ICE in March 2025 and sent to a Salvadoran prison without a hearing. A federal judge ordered his return, and the Supreme Court upheld that order on April 10, 2025. The administration argued it could not extract him from Salvadoran custody, and El Salvador’s president refused to release him.³¹

Law Firms, DEI, and Elections

Executive orders imposing sanctions on law firms the administration accused of partisan representation prompted suits from Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale, among others. The D.C. Circuit consolidated the appeals, with oral arguments scheduled for May 2026.¹ Orders conditioning federal funding on the removal of DEI programs in schools, universities, and grant recipients have produced a cluster of suits tracked by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, including a settled case in which the Department of Education agreed to stop relying on contested guidance. A federal court permanently blocked an executive order requiring proof of citizenship to register via federal voter forms on November 3, 2025. A separate suit challenges a March 2026 order directing DHS to supply states with lists of eligible voters.³²

DOJ Prosecutions of Political Figures

The second-term Justice Department has brought criminal charges against several politically prominent figures, which critics describe as retaliatory. The Lawfare tracker counts six such prosecutions.²

Letitia James was indicted by a federal grand jury in Virginia on October 9, 2025, on charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution, carrying a potential penalty of up to 30 years per count. She has called the charges “baseless.”³³³⁴
Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted in September 2025 on charges of making false statements to Congress and obstructing its investigation of the Russia probe. He pleaded not guilty on October 8, 2025.³⁴
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton was charged in October 2025 with 18 counts related to retaining and disseminating classified information. In June 2026 he reached a plea deal to plead guilty to one count, pay a $2.25 million fine, and face up to five years in prison, with the possibility of no jail time at the judge’s discretion.³⁵

Cryptocurrency Inquiries

No lawsuit had been filed over Trump’s cryptocurrency ventures as of mid-2026, but congressional investigations are underway. The “$TRUMP” meme coin, launched in January 2025 through Fight Fight Fight LLC, has generated roughly $350 million in transaction fees for Trump-affiliated entities, which collectively own 80% of the coins issued.³⁶ A May 2025 private dinner at Trump’s golf course for the top 220 coin investors drew 37 House Democrats, who demanded a DOJ investigation into potential violations of federal bribery laws and the Foreign Emoluments Clause. A majority of the top 25 coin holders appeared to be foreign nationals, and the top holder, Chinese entrepreneur Justin Sun, is a defendant in an ongoing SEC civil fraud case whose litigation was paused under the Trump administration.³⁷ The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has opened a formal preliminary inquiry.

Hundreds of cases are still pending and new ones file regularly. The picture changes week to week, but the pattern across civil, criminal, and policy fronts is clear: the Supreme Court has repeatedly rescued the administration from adverse lower-court orders; personal civil judgments against Trump have largely survived appeal while the money penalties are being contested; and the federal and state criminal cases that once posed the greatest risk have, one by one, gone away.

1
Just Security. Tracker: Litigation and Legal Challenges to the Trump Administration
2
Lawfare. Tracking Trump Administration Litigation
3
SCOTUSblog. Supreme Court Will Not Consider $5 Million Verdict Against Trump
4
CNN. E. Jean Carroll Trump Supreme Court
5
Los Angeles Times. Supreme Court Refuses Trump’s Appeal of E. Jean Carroll’s $5 Million Sexual Abuse Verdict
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CNBC. Supreme Court Trump Carroll Appeal
7
NPR. Trump Sentencing New York
8
Courthouse News Service. Donald Trump Sentenced in Historic Manhattan Hush Money Case
9
ABC News. Trump Sentencing Live Updates
10
CBS News. Trump Classified Documents Case Judge Blocks Jack Smith Special Counsel Report
11
SCOTUSblog. Justices Rule Trump Has Some Immunity From Prosecution
12
ABC News. Timeline: Special Counsel’s Investigation Into Trump’s Handling of Classified Documents
13
Democracy Docket. State’s Motion to Nolle Prosequi
14
ABC News. Georgia Prosecutor Drops Election Interference Case Against Trump
15
Georgia Recorder. Fulton County Election Interference Case Against Trump and His Allies Is Dismissed
16
BBC. New York Civil Fraud Case
17
Politico. Donald Trump Civil Fraud Appeal
18
ABC News. New York AG Letitia James Appeal
19
New York Times. Trump IRS Lawsuit Ruling
20
Bloomberg Tax. Trump Can’t Be on Both Sides of IRS Settlement, Democrats Say
21
Courthouse News Service. House Democrat Moves to Block Trump IRS Settlement
22
Politico. Trump Lawyers: No Collusion in Anti-Weaponization Fund
23
AP News. Trump Executive Order Lawsuit Tracker
24
NPR. Trump DOGE Lawsuit Federal Workers Cities
25
Federal News Network. Court Blocks Trump Administration’s Latest Mass Layoffs for Federal Employees
26
New York Attorney General. Attorney General James and Multistate Coalition Secure Court Order Blocking Federal Funding Freeze
27
Brennan Center for Justice. The Court Fight to Stop the Federal Funding Freeze
28
NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Know Your Rights: Birthright Citizenship
29
SCOTUSblog. Trump v. Barbara
30
Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. J.G.G.
31
FactCheck.org. Due Process and the Abrego Garcia Case
32
NAACP Legal Defense Fund. LDF Trump Lawsuit Tracker
33
U.S. Department of Justice. New York State Attorney General Indicted
34
Axios. Letitia James Indictment
35
PBS NewsHour. Ex-National Security Adviser John Bolton Will Plead Guilty in Classified Information Case
36
U.S. Senate. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Opens Inquiry Into Trump Crypto Corruption
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U.S. House of Representatives. Casten, Smith Demand DOJ Investigation Into Trump Crypto Dinner