Trump faces four legal challenges in different courts in one day

Former US President Donald Trump will have his hands full as four cases against him have been scheduled for four different courtrooms on Tuesday, a few days after he announced he was staging a return to the White House in 2024.

The challenges came after US Attorney General, Merrick Garland, appointed a special counsel to oversee the entirety of the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Trump‘s handling of classified materials after leaving office.

The Justice Department said it was expecting to ask a federal appeals court in Atlanta to remove the “special master”, the independent arbiter appointed to review the materials, from the case.

The special master had been appointed by a federal judge in Florida to review materials seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to determine which, if any, were protected by executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.

Department has already succeeded in extracting documents with classified markings from the review, but is now seeking unfettered access to everything taken from Mar-a-Lago in their August raid of the property. Trump has denied wrongdoing, it said in a statement.

In New York City, the prosecution is also expected to begin its criminal case against Trump and the Trump Organization.

Read also:Donald Trump declares for 2024 US Presidency

Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to skimming nearly $2 million in income taxes in August, testified last week that it was his decision alone to commit tax fraud by paying no taxes on the fringe benefits he received from the Trump Organization, including rent paid on his Manhattan apartment.

Also on Tuesday, attorneys representing Trump are scheduled to appear in the New York State Supreme Court at a hearing in the state attorney general’s civil lawsuit against Trump, his children and his company.

Finally, former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll was scheduled to appear in federal court in New York City for a hearing in her defamation lawsuit against Trump.

Carroll has sued the former President in November 2019 after Trump denied raping her by questioning her credibility and saying that she was “not my type,” accusations Trump has denied vehemently.

Carroll says she is also planning to file a separate claim for battery under a new law in New York which allowd sex assault victims to sue regardless of timeframe.

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