Has Donald Trump been convicted in any federal or state criminal cases as of November 16, 2025?
Executive summary
Donald J. Trump was convicted in a New York state criminal trial on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on May 30, 2024, a state-court verdict that is the central factual touchstone for any answer about convictions; that conviction and its aftermath — including an unconditional discharge imposed by the trial judge on January 10, 2025 — are well documented in contemporary reporting and court records [1] [2] [3]. No federal criminal conviction of Trump had occurred by November 16, 2025; federal cases had been dismissed or paused, and the Fulton County, Georgia, case remained in procedural flux as of mid-November 2025 [3] [2] [1].
1. The state conviction that defines the question
A Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on May 30, 2024, of 34 counts of first‑degree falsifying business records stemming from alleged payments tied to the 2016 campaign, and multiple authoritative summaries and legal trackers report that verdict as a conviction on all 34 counts [1] [2] [3]. Those sources present the New York outcome as a state criminal conviction, which legally distinguishes it from federal prosecutions and is the primary basis for saying Trump had been criminally convicted as of the dates those pieces record [1] [2].
2. What happened after the guilty verdict — sentencing and discharge
While the jury verdict established guilt, the practical legal aftermath altered the immediate consequences: Judge Juan Merchan later sentenced Trump to an unconditional discharge on January 10, 2025, a disposition reported in court records and legal reporting that effectively imposed no further punitive sanctions at that moment [2] [3]. Reporting and the New York court documents used here make clear that conviction and discharge are distinct events — the conviction itself stands in the record even where sentencing produced an unconditional discharge [2] [3].
3. The federal cases: no convictions as of mid‑November 2025
By November 16, 2025, none of the federal indictments against Trump had resulted in a criminal conviction. Reporting and legal trackers show federal cases were subject to dismissals, appeals, and procedural rulings — including dismissals or pauses after the 2024 election and litigation over appointments and funding of prosecutors — and no federal guilty verdicts are recorded in the cited sources [3] [2]. Sources explicitly note that after Trump’s 2024 election victory, two federal cases were dismissed and that the Justice Department took or dropped various appeals, illustrating why no federal convictions existed in that time frame [3].
4. The Georgia state case: unresolved status through mid‑November 2025
The Fulton County prosecution brought state charges in Georgia alleging election‑interference conduct; that case went through dismissals of some counts, a hiatus while appellate courts considered prosecutorial conflicts, and changes in prosecutorial leadership — but it had not produced a conviction by November 16, 2025 [1] [2]. Some reporting in the dataset records later developments in late November 2025, but those post‑November‑16 items lie outside the user’s cutoff and therefore cannot be asserted as of November 16, 2025 [1] [2].
5. How to state the bottom line precisely and why wording matters
The precise, defensible statement as of November 16, 2025 is: yes — Donald Trump has a state criminal conviction (Manhattan jury verdict, 34 counts, May 30, 2024) recorded in the public court record; however, he had not been convicted in any federal criminal case by that date, and the New York conviction’s practical penalty had been mitigated by an unconditional discharge on January 10, 2025, a legal outcome that reporting sources explicitly document [1] [2] [3]. This formulation distinguishes conviction (a jury finding) from sentence (punishment imposed) and separates state and federal jurisdictions, both critical legal distinctions reflected in the sources.
6. Caveats, competing narratives and limits of the record
Reporting and legal summaries sometimes compress or politicize these events — for example, advocacy or governmental statements emphasize the novelty of a presidential conviction while legal trackers stress procedural nuances and subsequent discharges or dismissals — so readers should note that media framing can conflate verdict, sentence, and finality; the sources used here report the conviction, the January 2025 unconditional discharge, and the lack of federal convictions as of the mid‑November 2025 cutoff [1] [2] [3]. If a reader seeks developments after November 16, 2025, those require fresh source checks because the cited materials include later dates that cannot be retroactively asserted for the November 16 cutoff [1] [2].