Vulnerable: Donald Trump's legal woes mount without protection of presidency

File: Donald Trump and his wife Melania at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida: He insisted on Fox News in an interview that aired Wednesday that the highly classified government records he had at the resort actually had been declassified, that a president has the power to declassify information "even by thinking about it." [Reuters]

WASHINGTON (AP) - Stark repudiation by federal judges he appointed. Far-reaching fraud allegations by New York's attorney general. It's been a week of widening legal troubles for Donald Trump, laying bare the challenges piling up as the former president operates without the protections afforded by the White House.

The bravado that served him well in the political arena is less handy in a legal realm dominated by verifiable evidence, where judges this week have looked askance at his claims and where a fraud investigation that took root when Trump was still president burst into public view in an allegation-filled 222-page state lawsuit.