What kinds of legal claims (civil, criminal, ethics, defamation) have been brought against recent presidents like Biden, Trump, and Obama?
Executive summary
Recent presidents have faced a mix of civil, criminal, ethics and defamation claims, but the mix and intensity vary sharply: Joe Biden’s presidency has been the target of a large volume of multistate and regulatory civil suits (including dozens of nationwide injunctions challenging executive actions) [1] [2], Donald Trump has been subject to an unusually large number of both civil suits and high-profile criminal prosecutions and defamation suits tied to his post-2020 conduct [3] [4] [5], and Barack Obama’s administrations faced fewer nationwide injunctions and comparatively fewer multistate institutional suits in their early years though they were not immune to legal and political challenges [2] [6].
1. Civil litigation and administrative challenges: volume, multistate suits, and injunctions
Civil litigation against presidents commonly takes the form of suits challenging executive actions, regulations, and policies; the Biden administration faced at least 133 multistate lawsuits by the end of his term and dozens of agency- and business-led suits claiming regulatory overreach [1] [6], while scholarly and government tallies show nationwide injunctions spiked under Trump relative to prior administrations and declined under Biden though remaining higher than past presidencies in some counts [2]. Reporting and trackers count a surge of litigation against Trump’s executive acts in early 2025—hundreds of cases challenging new orders—while Just Security and other trackers catalog litigation aimed at Trump administration actions across policy areas [4] [7]. Obama’s administration had fewer nationwide injunctions in comparable periods, based on the CRS and Harvard Law Review summaries [2].
2. Criminal investigations and prosecutions: mainly unique to Trump in recent years
Criminal exposure among modern presidents differs dramatically: reporting shows Donald Trump has faced multiple criminal indictments and special-counsel prosecutions tied to efforts to overturn the 2020 election and related matters, including high-profile federal and state charges alleging schemes to subvert the election and counts advanced by special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County prosecutors [3] [8]. The provided sources do not document criminal prosecutions of Biden or Obama as presidents; they instead show the more typical pattern of civil and administrative litigation against an administration [1] [6]. Where prosecutions occur, they raise distinct legal questions—immunity, scope of presidential acts, and appellate review—that courts continue to confront [8].
3. Ethics, oversight, and institutional checks: state attorneys general and business groups as enforcers
State attorneys general and private litigants have become primary enforcers of limits on presidential administrations: Democratic AGs sued the Trump administration more than 130 times during his term, a pattern that has been reciprocated in the Biden era with many Republican-led state challenges and business groups suing over regulatory reach [9] [6]. Congress, administrative law procedures, and the judiciary all serve as oversight mechanisms, and the surge in multistate litigation against Biden reflects political and substantive disputes over rulemaking and the proper arena for policy disputes [1] [6].
4. Defamation and reputation claims: lawsuits by and against presidents
Defamation litigation involving presidents has featured both plaintiffs and defendants drawing on libel law and First Amendment doctrines: Donald Trump has filed high-profile defamation suits against media outlets over coverage he deems false, for example a multimillion-dollar claim against CNN, while major defendants (such as Dominion and Smartmatic) threatened or pursued suits against Trump allies and media figures for election-related falsehoods [5] [8]. The sources do not catalog comparable defamation suits initiated by Biden or Obama against media on the same scale in the provided material, though historical tensions between administrations and the press are longstanding [5].
5. Patterns, politicization, and what the litigation mix reveals
The pattern across presidencies is revealing: litigation volume often reflects political polarization and the use of courts as a policy battleground—Trump’s terms generated unusually many injunctions and later criminal prosecutions tied to election conduct [2] [3], Biden’s presidency prompted a wave of multistate civil suits and business challenges to regulatory actions [1] [6], and Obama’s record shows fewer nationwide injunctions by comparison though he too faced persistent legal challenges [2]. These trends suggest that the legal claims themselves are both substantive challenges to policy and instruments of partisan pressure; sources note that counts can rise or fall with the nature of policies pursued and litigants’ strategic choices [2] [9].
6. Limits of this review
This analysis relies on compiled counts, trackers, and reporting in the supplied sources and therefore summarizes patterns rather than cataloguing every specific case; the provided material does not, for example, list every individual ethics complaint or every defamation threat across all presidencies, so conclusions are bounded by those reporting limitations [1] [7].