Updated at 4:23 p.m. ET

Of all the perks of being president, Donald Trump may soon miss most the legal protection that it affords.

For four years, Trump has benefited from the de facto immunity from prosecution that all presidents enjoy while in office. But that cloak will pass to Joe Biden when he’s sworn in on Jan. 20, leaving Trump out in the legal cold.

“Clearly, the president enjoyed immunity when he was in office,” said Danya Perry, a former state and federal prosecutor in New York. “And it’s possible, as a matter of law, that he could be indicted on Jan. 21.”

There’s no indication that an indictment is imminent, and it’s possible that Trump could emerge entirely unscathed. But there’s also no doubt that once he’s out of office, he’ll be facing a higher level of legal jeopardy than he has in years.

“His legal risks increase immeasurably come Jan. 21, both on the civil and the criminal side,” Perry said.

Potential federal liability

The most developed case that could ensnare Trump might be out of the Southern District of New York. It stems from the federal prosecution against Michael Cohen, Trump’s onetime personal attorney and fixer.

Cohen pleaded guilty to a range of crimes, including arranging illegal hush money payments to keep women silent during the 2016 campaign about extramarital affairs they say they had with Trump before he was president. Trump has denied the allegations.

Cohen has said he acted at the direction of and in coordination with Trump. Prosecutors, meanwhile, referred to the president in court papers as “Individual 1.”

It is Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted. So although it’s possible for a president to break the law before or during his time in office, prosecutors’ inability to seek an indictment effectively means he can’t be accused, tried or punished while still in office.

Cohen’s wrongdoing, which prosecutors tied to Trump without naming him, raises the question as to whether Trump might face charges of his own.

“Ordinarily, had the target not been a sitting president with immunity, I think ‘Individual 1,’ as he’s referred to, very likely would have been prosecuted along with his aider and abettor, Michael Cohen,” Perry said.

Uncharted waters

There could be significant complications to pursuing such a case, however.

For one, prosecuting a former president would be politically fraught, particularly in a country as divided as this one. The decision on whether to do so at the federal level will fall to the new administration.

“It comes down to a political calculation,” said Kim Wehle, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at the University of Baltimore School of Law.

“And the understanding is President-elect Biden has already signaled he doesn’t have an appetite for that, which makes sense given he has a lot of political capital that needs to be used on critical issues like the pandemic, like climate change, like the economy.”

Biden has indeed signaled his reluctance to pursue a case against his predecessor. In August, Biden said he’d leave the decision to the Justice Department and the attorney general, but he suggested pursuing charges might do more damage than good.

“I think it is a very, very unusual thing and probably not very — how can I say it? — good for democracy to be talking about prosecuting former presidents,” Biden said.

There’s also the possibility that Trump could attempt to pardon himself before leaving office. The president has asserted he has that power but said in the past he didn’t feel he needed to use it because he argues he hasn’t broken any law.

An attempt at a self-pardon would be an unprecedented move and could very well face legal challenges.

The city and state of New York

What is clear about Trump’s pardon power, however, is that it does not extend to crimes at the state level. And that could prove problematic for Trump in his former hometown.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has an active criminal investigation into Trump and his businesses. The exact contours of the probe are not clear, but court papers suggest he’s investigating possible insurance or financial fraud.

“That looks like it’s the most likely place where he could have some criminal liability around taxes, for example,” Wehle said.

The case has been tied up for months as Trump fights a grand jury subpoena that Vance issued to the president’s personal accounting firm. Vance’s office is seeking eight years of Trump’s tax returns and financial records.

The president fought the subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court last summer and lost, although the high court left the door open for him to raise other legal challenges.

Trump did so, arguing that the subpoena was overly broad and politically motivated. Vance rejected those claims, and lower courts agreed with the district attorney’s office. Trump’s attorneys are now asking the Supreme Court to block the subpoena.

Wehle said the patience Vance’s team has shown in litigating its subpoena case suggests the probe isn’t simply political — a Democratic city official in New York playing to the crowd there.

“It’s hard to imagine that Cyrus Vance would have put this kind of effort into investigating Donald Trump while he was president if he was just going to drop that investigation and anything that could come out of that when he is a private citizen like anyone else,” Wehle said.

The Vance case is not the only legal trouble brewing in New York.

The state attorney general, Letitia James, is conducting a civil investigation into the Trump businesses. James is looking into whether the Trump Organization improperly inflated the value of its assets for loan or insurance purposes, and then deflated the value for tax purposes.

The president’s son, Eric Trump, reportedly was deposed under oath last month as part of the probe.

While James’ investigation is a civil one, it could cross over to the criminal side depending on what investigators uncover.

According to Perry, the former New York prosecutor, both of the probes could be relatively straightforward because they are likely based heavily on documents.

“If you’re looking at several assets, for example, and different values are attributed to them, one in a tax return and another in a bank loan document, that might be relatively simple,” she said. “They do seem to be very paper based.”

Cohen alleged in congressional testimony that Trump’s businesses engaged in such practices.

But there are significant challenges in criminal tax cases, Perry said, because returns for a sprawling business can be complicated, and prosecutors have to prove that people involved willfully broke the law.

“To prove that the taxpayer here, Mr. Trump himself, has committed intentional, willful tax fraud can be difficult, and it doesn’t necessarily fly off the pages of the tax returns,” Perry said. “A cooperating witness is always very helpful for that.”

It isn’t clear whether Cohen or other sometime aides of Trump might be in a position to appear in a criminal case and testify as to the boss’s actions or intentions.

And Trump’s legal jeopardy does not end there.

He also faces defamation lawsuits filed by two women who say he sexually assaulted them — allegations he denies. While Trump doesn’t face criminal liability in those suits, he does face potential damage to his reputation and financial repercussions.

In all, it adds up to a legally perilous — and potentially expensive — post-presidency.

“It’s a potential avalanche,” Wehle said. “But this is, again, a man that is very used to using the legal system to his advantage.”

Georgia voters are being bombarded whether it’s Twitter messages, robocalls or the more than $100 million-worth of television commercials they’ll see between now and Jan. 5. That’s when Georgia’s two Republican senators will face Democratic challengers in twin runoffs that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

Money and operatives are flooding the state to get out the vote.

Republican Sen. Rick Scott from neighboring Florida paid for an attack ad that features Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer from election night saying “Now we take Georgia, then we change America!” Scott then warns “Georgia, don’t let these radicals change America.”

A host of powerful GOP figures is trying to help incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. Neither got more than 50% of the general election vote, resulting in runoffs against Democratic challengers.

Loeffler faces Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. Perdue is against Jon Ossoff, who gained national attention in a 2017 special election for Congress, nearly flipping a seat long in Republican control.

The runoff is one more reason that Georgia is in the national political spotlight. A hand retally in the presidential election there is complete and awaiting official certification for Democrat Joe Biden. President Trump has attacked Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State and Gov. Brian Kemp over the count. Meanwhile, Democrats are working to keep up the enthusiasm after Biden’s victory.

The state has added more than a million new registered voters since 2016 when Trump took the state by roughly 5 percentage points. Results in 2020 show a more diverse and younger electorate that is changing the political landscape.

‘To make sure that our voices are heard’

“Welcome to Students for 2020 HQ,” says 17-year-old Edward Aguilar, as he walks under colorful string lights on a friend’s back patio in Alpharetta. This is the makeshift office for the group that developed an algorithm for college students to determine where their vote matters most – in their hometowns or where they go to school.

Now calling themselves Students for Tomorrow, they’re shifting gears for the runoff.

“We founded this organization because we want our interests to be represented in government,” says Aguilar, the CEO. “We want to make sure that our voices are heard.”

They’re backing Democrat Jon Ossoff for senate, in part because of his age. He’s 33. On this evening, the mission is to refine scripts for issue-focused phone canvassing.

Michael Giusto says the calls should start from common ground. He suggests a template.

“Hey, we’re students for tomorrow,” he says as if making a canvassing call. “We’re trying to get student ideas into office, and we’ve been calling other students to make sure that their ideas are being represented.”

Giusto turned 18 after the general election, but can now vote in the runoff and wants to persuade others to join him, and register by the Dec. 7 deadline.

It’s estimated that more than 20,000 potential voters will have turned 18 between the general election and the runoff, according to the Civics Center, a youth engagement group.

But Edward Aguilar says that’s not enough to make up the difference between Perdue and Ossoff, who was down by more than 80,000 votes.

“I feel that the only way Ossoff can really win is by bringing over voters from the other side,” Aguilar says.

‘Engaging young voters’

So they will try deep canvassing, tapping issues that resonate with young Perdue voters – the economy for instance – and explain how Ossoff’s policies might fit.

Aguilar sees momentum from the general election in terms of engaging young voters.

“What’s exciting about right now is that we just saw absolutely historic turnout,” he says.

In Georgia, some 20% of ballots were cast by voters between the ages of 18 and 29.

The figures mirror the record turnout both nationally, and in Georgia, a state that moved firmly from taken-for-granted Republican stronghold to courted battleground territory in 2020.

Now with control of the Senate on the line, the attention is even more intense.

Other groups are also making a concerted effort to drive turnout. When We All Vote uses social media and games like Among Us and Kahoot! to share information about how to register or how to request an absentee ballot, says Tiffany Pham, a 16-year-old student activist from Clayton County, Ga.

“I think this is really important to equip the next generation with the most important tool, which is their vote,” Pham says. “Historically, in our country, we’ve always been seen as like the apathetic generation that doesn’t really care. And that’s just simply not true.”

This weekend, Black Voters Matter is launching a “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” bus tour in Georgia.

And Republicans are working just as hard to keep their voters engaged.

GOP senators ‘have a very delicate balance’

A key message is keeping the Senate in GOP hands.

“From the Republican perspective, a lot of people view this as the firewall,” says attorney Jake Evans, chairman of the Georgia chapter of the Republican National Lawyers Association, and past president of the Atlanta Young Republicans.

But talking about a firewall is tricky for the GOP senators, Evans says, because that acknowledges Biden as the president-elect when Trump is still disputing the outcome in Georgia and elsewhere.

“They have a very delicate balance,” Evans says. “They have to balance to Trump supporters under the reality that he likely is not going to be president on Jan. 21, 2021.”

Republicans have historically performed well in runoffs, which tend to have lower turnouts. Even in this heightened atmosphere, Evans says the GOP has the advantage.

“I don’t think that the Democrats have the Darth Vader at the top of the ticket – who’s Donald Trump – to drive up their turnout,” Evans says. “You had a lot of first-time voters in metro Atlanta who were really turning out to the polls for one reason, and that was to vote against Donald Trump.”

But no Trump on the ticket could also work against Republicans, and some have suggested that attacks on Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger are part of a strategy to keep the base fired up. Both Loeffler and Perdue called for his resignation.

Some have speculated that political operatives could come here and register to vote in the January runoff. Georgia’s voting implementation manager Gabriel Sterling says that would be a felony.

“If you want to move to Georgia and be a part of the No. 1 state in America to do business, we are happy to have you,” Sterling says. “But if you are here for the sole sake of politics – don’t game our system.”

Early voting in the Georgia senate runoffs starts Dec. 14.

Emma Peaslee is NPR’s Kroc Fellow.