Situationer: The legal woes of Donald Trump

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump has been indicted over his handling of classified documents, the first former US president to face federal criminal charges.

But the matter is far from the only legal peril dogging the twice-impeached Trump as he seeks a return to the White House in 2024.

Here are the key cases involving the one-term president, who turns 77 years old on Wednesday.

Trump, in an indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith, is accused of endangering national security by holding on to top secret nuclear and defense documents after leaving the White House.

Trump kept the files -- which included records from the Pentagon, CIA and National Security Agency -- unsecured at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and thwarted official efforts to retrieve them, according to the indictment.

Trump is charged with 31 counts of “willful retention of national defense information,” each punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

A New York grand jury indicted Trump in March over hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Prosecutors say the money was paid prior to the 2016 election to silence Daniels over claims she had a tryst with Trump in 2006 -- a year after he married Melania Trump. Late in the campaign, Trump´s lawyer Michael Cohen arranged a payment of $130,000 to Daniels in exchange for her pledge of confidentiality.

Smith, the special counsel, will also decide whether Trump faces any charges stemming from the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol by his supporters, who were seeking to halt the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden´s election victory.

Before the attack, Trump delivered a fiery speech nearby urging the crowd to “fight like hell.” Federal prosecutors have obtained convictions or guilty pleas from more than 500 people for participating in the Capitol riot.

Trump is also being investigated for pressuring officials in the southern state of Georgia to overturn Biden´s 2020 election victory, including a taped phone call in which he asked the then-secretary of state to “find” enough votes to reverse the result.

The top prosecutor in Georgia´s Fulton County, Fani Willis, has assembled a special grand jury that could see Trump facing conspiracy charges connected to election fraud. In unusually public remarks, the grand jury´s forewoman in February said the 23-member panel had recommended indictments of multiple people, including “certainly names that you would recognize.” She did not say whether Trump was among them.