Yes, Donald Trump Can Still Be President as a Convicted Felon

He is not the first convicted felon to run for public office.

For the first time in history, a presumptive presidential candidate from one of the two major U.S. political parties is a convicted felon.

But does Donald Trump’s conviction in the Manhattan silence case prevent him from running for – and potentially serving – as president? No.

As a candidate for federal office, Trump is restricted only by the requirements of the U.S. Constitution. These requirements are simple: the president must be at least 35 years old, a natural-born American citizen and have lived in the US for at least 14 years. There is nothing about criminal convictions.

Now, if Trump is sentenced to prison and also wins the presidency, that would pose obvious practical complications. It is implausible that he could govern the country from a prison cell, and some legal experts say the resulting constitutional crisis would require his sentence to be suspended so he can fulfill his duties as the country’s chief executive. It could be a few weeks before the judge in the silence case hands down Trump’s sentence, which could be up to four years in prison — or none at all.

While Trump is the first criminal candidate who could win enough votes to win the presidency, he is far from the first criminal to run for office.

The most famous was Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs, who ran for president in 1920 from a prison cell while serving a 10-year federal sentence for imploring his supporters to resist the World War I draft. Worldwide. He got three percent of the vote.

Trump is not a socialist, but there are some similarities between the two candidates. Perhaps most notably, both Trump and Debs used their legal issues as talking points to galvanize their base.

Debs supporters wore lapel buttons that announced their preferred candidate as “Convict No. 9,653.”

Trump has made his four accusations a focal point for his 2024 candidacy, even releasing his photo from Georgia in a defiant tweet. At his trial in Manhattan, Trump gave daily campaign speeches in the hallway outside the courthouse — delivered from a fence of metal barricades erected by court officials.

Via POLITICO