The endless legal troubles swirling around former President Donald Trump are already at the center of his newly announced 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump himself, in his nomination speech on Tuesday, spoke of how he was a “victim” of “weaponizing the justice system” as he spoke out against the FBI’s search of his Florida home as part of a criminal research. to his White House mishandling of documents.
Regardless of whether Trump’s criminal exposé politically undermines his campaign or rallies his supporters, investigations that could implicate him — which also include federal and state probes into 2020 election gamesmanship — are unlikely legal obstacle to his candidacy.
Even a conviction is unlikely to disqualify him from the ballot, legal experts said.
“It might be a practical obstacle, it might be a fundraising obstacle, but these are political issues, not legal ones,” said Derek Mueller, an election law professor at the University of Iowa College of Law.
On the other hand, Trump’s candidacy for president does not, by itself, provide him with any additional legal protections from investigations. But it creates a more complex political and practical environment for researchers to navigate.
This issue has not been fully settled by the courts, but the general consensus is that neither an indictment nor a conviction would legally prevent Trump from being elected.
Not only have convicts run for federal office in the past, but at least one successfully ran for president from prison: Eugene Debs, a perennial socialist candidate for the White House in the early 20th century, won more than 900,000 votes in 1920 presidential campaign he ran while imprisoned on a espionage charge.
The reason it is widely believed that a conviction would not preclude Trump from returning to the White House is because of a prevailing legal argument that only the Constitution sets the standards that candidates must meet to become president.
“It’s pretty widely accepted that the qualifications to serve as president are listed in the Constitution,” Muller said. “And a felony conviction alone is not one of them, and the states and Congress cannot add to those qualifications.”
That’s why many legal experts believe the courts would not entertain states’ proposals to bar presidential candidates who refuse to release their tax returns, as Trump has refused to do.
But if Trump is indicted under one of the statutes federal investigators are looking into in the Mar-a-Lago documents probe, it could be the most serious test of the constitutional issue.
One of the laws involved in the Justice Department’s Mar-a-Lago probe, a federal statute that criminalizes concealing or removing government records, said those found guilty “shall lose office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”
“It would provide the strongest case for the legality of the statutory deduction that one could make, both because of its object — national security — and because Congress has spoken so clearly and explicitly,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former U.S. official. Department of Homeland Security who also worked on the Whitewater investigation of President Bill Clinton. “My guess is he wouldn’t be standing still.”
While Trump was in the White House, he argued on several occasions – sometimes successfully, sometimes not – that his status as president afforded him certain legal protections.
But those protections don’t apply to him now just because he’s announced his bid to run for the White House again. Remaining fights over his conduct while president will continue, but he has no special legal tools to shield things he does or says while merely a candidate.
“There’s no executive privilege or anything attached right now as a candidate,” Muller said.
The main advantage that running for president gives Trump is the promise of delay: that if he can delay the legal proceedings long enough that they won’t be resolved if and when he is re-elected, then he can try to use the presidency as a shield. .
Trump’s announcement that he was running for president created no formal, legal hurdle for criminal investigators looking into possible wrongdoing by him or his allies. But Trump’s candidacy could inject other political and practical considerations.
As CNN previously reported, the Justice Department had been weighing in the weeks leading up to Trump’s announcement whether to appoint a special counsel. DOJ officials have debated whether doing so could insulate the department from allegations that the investigations are politically motivated attacks on 2024 presidential opponent Joe Biden.
Attorney General Merrick Garland declined to answer CNN’s question about the possibility in March, insisting the department “doesn’t shy away from cases that are controversial or sensitive or political.”
As of early this month, no decision had been made public.
Regardless of where Garland lands on the special counsel question, Trump’s nomination undoubtedly raises the stakes of the investigation. The DOJ will likely be extra cautious and only bring charges if the department is extremely confident it could secure a conviction, former prosecutors said.
Trump’s announcement could even speed things up.
“I think the Justice Department will understand, reasonably, that they need to move in like the first quarter of next year, before the campaign really starts,” Rosenzweig said. “So we look forward … to indictment by January 2024.”
Trump faces legal exposure from the myriad of civil lawsuits filed against him, ranging from a political fraud case brought by the New York attorney general to lawsuits seeking damages for his conduct before the attack on Capitol Hill on 6 January 2021. defamation complaint filed by a woman who accused him of rape.
In the cases involving his conduct while in the White House, Trump has tried to make arguments about the legal protections he said his status as president afforded him. But he receives no additional protections simply by announcing a presidential campaign.
“The United States Supreme Court actually approved civil suits against President Clinton in the 90s while he was sitting as president. So certainly, just being a candidate for office doesn’t stop these kinds of cases from going forward,” Muller said.
At least immediately after the announcement, perhaps the most tangible result of Trump’s declaration of candidacy, in terms of his legal troubles, is that the Republican National Committee will not foot the bill for the lawyers representing him in the New York investigations. its business practices.
“We cannot pay legal bills for any candidate that has been announced,” RNC Chairwoman Rona McDaniel told CNN’s Dana Bash earlier this month.
He said the committee was willing to fund his legal defense in the civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James because the RNC sees that lawsuit as “a politically motivated investigation” that began when he was president.
Trump also used money he raised after the presidency for his leadership PAC — a fund-raising vehicle typically used to support other candidates — to pay for firms representing him in the James case and other matters.
“We cannot make in-kind contributions to any candidate,” McDaniel said at the time. “Right now, it’s the former president who is being attacked from all sides with lawsuits. And he’s certainly raised more at the RNC than we’ve spent on those bills.”
