Is Donald Trump's run of good fortune about to end? It's all in a jury's hands now.

By Lukas I. Alpert

The year 2024 has been good to Trump, who has staved off some of his legal woes, increased his fortune by billions and secured the Republican nomination for president. That run of fortune could end in a New York courtroom.

So far, 2024 has turned out to be a pretty good year for Donald Trump. But all that may soon come to an end in a New York courtroom.

Now that the case alleging that Trump illegally tried to cover up hush-money payments to silence women who claimed to have had affairs with him has gone to a jury, the impending verdict hangs over him like the sword of Damocles.

A guilty verdict would bring to an end an exceptional run of good fortune for Trump over the past several months. An acquittal or hung jury, meanwhile, could keep it rolling.

Trump came into the year facing a variety of legal and financial woes, and it wasn't clear that the former president would be able to galvanize enough support behind his run to return to the White House to mount a serious challenge.

But he rapidly consolidated political support in the primaries and quickly emerged as the Republican party's presumptive nominee for November. His performance in the polls against Democratic incumbent Joe Biden has consistently put him slightly ahead in most national polls and in several key states.

Earlier this year, however, Trump suffered crushing losses in two civil trials that looked like they could potentially threaten his real-estate empire.

In the first, Trump was found guilty of defaming writer E. Jean Carroll and ordered to pay $91 million in damages. The second saw Trump found liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth by repeatedly misstating the value of his assets to get preferential lending and insurance rates. He was ordered to pay $464 million in penalties in that case.

In late March, Trump - facing the possibility of having his assets seized by New York Attorney General Letitia James - scored a key legal victory when an appellate court ruled that in order to appeal, he did not have to secure a bond for the full $464 million verdict, but rather a more manageable $175 million.

At the same time, Trump saw his personal fortune soar by billions when his company, Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT), operator of the social-media platform Truth Social, went public. Its stock quickly became a meme stock and soared, pumping up his net worth - on paper, at least - by several billion dollars.

In the three other criminal cases Trump faces, he has also secured beneficial rulings that have slowed those cases down, which means they won't likely be resolved before the election.

A federal case in which Trump is charged with illegally trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and fomenting the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol building as Congress was preparing to certify Joe Biden's victory has been postponed pending a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on Trump's claims of immunity. A decision could come by late June, by which time it is unlikely that a trial would be resolved before November's election.

A separate federal case in Florida in which Trump is accused of illegally withholding hundreds of classified documents after leaving office and refusing to return them when asked has also been delayed indefinitely, as the judge handling the case has declined to set a trial date, citing complications surrounding a number of pretrial motions that need to be resolved.

And a state case in Georgia alleging that Trump and his advisers engaged in racketeering while illegally attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in that state also remains on hold, as Trump's attorneys have sought to have Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis removed from the case and as prosecutors have appealed a ruling that dismissed three charges against Trump.

So that leaves the New York hush-money case. A guilty verdict could cause significant problems for Trump, who would face a possible jail term and continued distractions from his presidential campaign.

But an acquittal or hung jury would likely clear the way for him to campaign with fewer distractions.

-Lukas I. Alpert

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05-30-24 0906ET

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