2024 was a landmark year for prosecutions tied to politics.
It marked the first criminal conviction of a former president and the first criminal conviction of a sitting president's child. Lawmakers in both chambers faced criminal charges. And lawyers, aides and allies to those political figures were ensnared in legal troubles of their own.
Here’s whose legal matters dominated the news in 2024 and where they all stand heading into 2025.
At the start of this year, former President Trump faced four criminal cases and a flurry of civil cases. But now, the criminal cases against Trump have largely fallen apart while his civil cases have slipped into muddy waters — and he’ll soon return to the White House.
After Trump’s election win, special counsel Jack Smith dismissed all charges against him in his federal election subversion and classified documents cases.
A federal judge dismissed the election subversion case without prejudice, leaving open a theoretical possibility that the government could bring charges again once Trump’s term is over. In Florida, a different federal judge had already dismissed the documents case for Trump and his two co-defendants after finding Smith was unlawfully appointed; the appeal of that decision will go forward for the other two defendants.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Georgia criminal case could be doomed after a state appeals court disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) from the case over her once-romantic relationship with a top prosecutor. The appeals panel found it amounted to a significant appearance of impropriety that justified the removal of Willis’s office from the case.
Willis appealed the disqualification to the Georgia Supreme Court, which must first decide whether to take up the appeal at all before ruling on whether to revive her prosecution.
And in New York, the fate of Trump’s criminal case is still in limbo. Judge Juan Merchan upheld a jury’s verdict convicting Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records after finding that the outcome could withstand the Supreme Court’s new test for presidential immunity. But the judge must still rule on whether Trump’s White House victory compels the dismissal of the jury’s verdict and the case in its entirety.
Trump’s civil cases, however, are still moving forward.
New York Attorney General Letitia James’s (D) civil fraud case is being weighed by the state’s midlevel appeals court and two defamation suits brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll are also being actively appealed. Between judgments in the two cases, Trump is staring down the barrel of more than a half-billion dollars in penalties.
Hunter Biden, the son of President Biden, this year was convicted by a jury on federal gun charges and pleaded guilty to federal tax charges, avoiding a trial.
Now, his slate has been wiped clean.
President Biden issued his son a “full and unconditional pardon” after months of vowing he would not, granting him clemency for any offenses against the U.S. from Jan. 1, 2014, to Dec. 1, 2024.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” President Biden said in a statement.
As a result, the judges in Hunter Biden’s gun and tax cases canceled his sentencings and began winding the cases down — but not before one of the judges, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi, blasted the president for insinuating his son was selectively prosecuted.
“The Constitution provides the President with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history.”
Former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) was found guilty in July of bribery, acting as a foreign agent and a slew of other charges in his federal corruption case.
The ex-chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee was convicted on all 16 counts he faced, from accepting luxurious bribes in exchange for his political clout to acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.
A federal judge earlier this month declined to throw out all those convictions in a long-shot bid by Menendez, but he did eliminate a count he found duplicative. Now, Menendez is attempting to throw out his conviction and get a new trial because jurors were accidentally shown improper evidence while deliberating.
His attorney, Adam Fee, wrote in court filings that the “serious breach” makes a new trial “unavoidable,” while federal prosecutors said it’s “extraordinarily unlikely” jurors even “became aware” of the incorrect exhibit versions while deliberating.
However, the judge has signaled he may be disinclined to do so. On Monday, he declined to push back the New Jersey Democrat’s Jan. 29 sentencing ahead of the ex-lawmaker’s wife’s trial on similar charges, which is now scheduled to begin on Feb. 5.
Two House members, from both sides of the aisle, also faced criminal charges in 2024.
Former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) pleaded guilty in August to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, avoiding a criminal trial but ensuring some jail time. It put a bookend on his dramatic rise and fall, first flipping a New York House district from blue to red in 2022 before later being expelled from the chamber.
Santos’s sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 7.
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) was indicted alongside his wife in May on charges they accepted nearly $600,000 in bribes from foreign entities and laundered the funds. Cuellar has pleaded not guilty, and a trial is set for March.
A slew of Trump allies dealt with legal troubles in the last year, much of it tied to their work or connection to the president-elect.
Ex-Trump White House advisers Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon served prison time after they were individually convicted for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Appeals in those cases are ongoing.
Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira remain on the hook in the federal classified documents case that once involved Trump. Though Trump’s charges were dismissed after his election victory, Smith indicated the case would continue for his two co-defendants.
In those federal cases, Trump could grant clemency to his allies. However, those facing state charges won’t be so easily let off the hook.
The other defendants in Trump’s Georgia criminal case — including ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani — could continue facing criminal charges, depending on the outcome of Willis’s appeal. Several of those allies are also charged in Arizona.
