Donald Trump's Miserable New Year

While Donald Trump has made it through 2023 in a stronger position than when he began in some ways, the New Year could see his world come tumbling down.

The former president is still leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination despite his many legal woes, but his campaign and court calendars are set to increasingly overlap in 2024.

Closing arguments are scheduled for early January in Trump's civil fraud trial, which threatens the future of the real estate empire that brought him fame and later catapulted him to the White House.

Judge Arthur Engoron has made his decision on the top claim in the lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, ruling that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively exaggerating his assets and net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans. Trump has denied wrongdoing, saying the financial documents actually understated his net worth.

But his claim that he is worth billions could hinder him in a defamation trial scheduled to begin on January 16.

The defamation claim stems from a lawsuit by columnist E. Jean Carroll who said Trump defamed her in 2019 after she first publicly accused him of raping her in the dressing room of a department store.

The lawsuit has been delayed for years by appeals. She is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages and substantially more in punitive damages, The Associated Press reported.

Claims that Trump defamed Carroll again with remarks he made publicly after she won a separate defamation lawsuit earlier this year have been added to the lawsuit. In May, a Manhattan jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages. The former Elle magazine columnist is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages and substantially more in punitive damages.

The first of Trump's four criminal trials—on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol—is scheduled to begin in early March. Special counsel Jack Smith is seeking to keep it on track, filling a brief on Saturday that urged a federal appeals court to reject Trump's claims that he is immune from prosecution.

Trump is also charged in another federal case with illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. A trial in that case is currently scheduled for May 20 in Florida, though Trump's lawyers are working to delay it.

Trump also faces a state charges in Georgia that accuses him of trying to subvert the 2020 election result there, and charges in New York that accuse him of falsifying business records in connection with an alleged hush-money payment to a porn actor. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and decried them as politically motivated efforts to derail his 2024 campaign.

Still, the former president's many legal problems have not yet appeared to hurt him as he campaigns to regain the White House: his lead against his GOP rivals is even stronger now than it was before his first indictment in March.

According to FiveThirtyEight's tracker, Trump has 61 percent support as of Saturday. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had widely been considered the biggest threat to Trump before entering the race earlier this year, is in a distant second place with just 11.7 percent support. In January, Trump had 45 percent support and was leading DeSantis by about 10 points.

Trump is also polling well against President Joe Biden, in a possible rematch of the 2020 race. RealClearPoltiics' average has Trump leading Biden by more than 2 points.

But despite his wide lead in the polls, Trump could face additional hurdles if more states follow Maine and Colorado in removing Trump from their state presidential primary ballots.

Maine's Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows on Thursday removed Trump from the state's presidential primary ballot under a clause in the Constitution that prohibits those who "engaged in insurrection" from holding office. It followed a ruling earlier in December by the Colorado Supreme Court that removed Trump from the ballot there.

Lawsuits seeking to remove Trump from the ballot in 2024 are also pending in 14 states, including in battleground Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

The decision in Colorado has been stayed until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether Trump is barred by under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. And it's likely the nation's highest court will have the final say on whether Trump appears on the ballot in Maine and other states.

Newsweek has contacted a Trump spokesperson for comment via email.