Top political courtroom moments of 2024
President-elect Donald Trump, President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and the billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk were among just some of the well-known political figures who were ordered to court in 2024. The year saw a flurry of election-related lawsuits play out in swing states across the country, the winding down special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into the president-elect, and a July Supreme Court decision that expanded the view of presidential immunity–among many other things.
As this year comes to a close, here is a look at some of the top political courtroom moments of 2024.
President-elect Donald Trump was found guilty by a Manhattan jury in April on 34 charges of falsifying business records stemming from payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels— which he railed against at the time as a “corrupt trial” and a “disgrace.” Trump’s sentencing hearing, originally planned for July 11, was delayed by Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan in light of the 2024 election and Trump’s status as the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee, four days ahead of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
His decisive victory in November added further pressure on Merchan to dismiss the charges. Last week, Merchan granted Trump’s request to file a motion to dismiss the charges, giving the president-elect’s legal team until Dec. 2 to submit the motion for dismissal—and giving Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his team of prosecutors until Dec. 9 to respond.
Special Counsel Jack Smith moved to drop two federal cases against president-elect Donald Trump this week— acknowledging Trump’s return to the White House, and long-held Justice Department policy that precludes the department from investigating a sitting president. Smith was tapped by Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2022 to investigate both the alleged effort by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as Trump’s keeping of allegedly classified documents at his residence in Florida after leaving the White House in 2020.
The Supreme Court ruled in July that Trump should be granted absolute immunity from prosecution for actions taken while exercising any of his “core constitutional powers” as president. The 6-3 decision, which split justices along party lines, expanded the notion of presidential immunity not only in Trump’s case, but for past and future presidents as well.
Philadelphia’s top prosecutor, Larry Krasner, sued Elon Musk in an effort to stop his Trump-backed PAC from conducting daily, $1 million giveaways to swing state voters in the run-up to the Nov. 5 elections, describing them as an “illegal lottery” that violated Pennsylvania law.
Hunter Biden’s criminal trial in Wilmington, Delaware, dominated headlines this summer. A jury ultimately found Hunter guilty on all charges in the case, which centered on whether he made false statements in his 2018 purchase of a firearm—but it also laid bare some personal family moments, such as the testimony of Hunter’s daughter, Naomi Biden, as well as several ex-girlfriends.
Lawyers for the Republican Party and the Democratic Party filed a flurry of lawsuits in major swing states in the run-up to Election Day, with the majority of legal challenges centered in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—or the battleground states considered most likely to help pick the president.
