Former President Donald Trump was found guilty on Thursday of all 34 criminal counts related to a hush-money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels. It’s the first time a former president has been convicted of a felony. With sentencing scheduled for July 11, Trump could face prison time. But as the presumptive Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential race, could Trump still run for office from behind bars?
Legal experts told Business Insider there’s nothing in the Constitution preventing him from doing just that.
Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill, said: “If he happens to be in prison at the time of the next presidential election, the fact that he’s in prison will not prevent him from running.”
Running for president from jail isn’t exactly unprecedented — it’s been done twice before. Though, to be clear, neither candidate was anywhere near Trump’s level.
Barring a seismic event, the former president will accept his third straight Republican presidential nomination just days after he is sentenced. Any appeals process may delay his possible jail time by years, if he goes at all.
Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran from behind bars over 100 years ago
In 1920, Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran for the Oval Office from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he was known as “prisoner 9653,” according to Smithsonian Magazine. Debs was a so-called “radical” at the time, decrying capitalism and the World War I draft. The latter got him locked up, but Debs earned plenty of supporters during his imprisonment. He had also run for president on the Social Party ticket five prior times, often campaigning what historians attributed as more a symbolic race.
On election night in 1920, Debs didn’t make a speech, and instead, he wrote a statement, the Washington Post reported.
“I thank the capitalist masters for putting me here,” he wrote, according to The Post. “They know where I belong under their criminal and corrupting system. It is the only compliment they could pay me.”
Debs ended up earning about 3.5% of the national vote for president, Smithsonian Magazine reported.
Fringe candidate Lyndon LaRouche tried for the Democratic Party nomination and then switched tickets
Over 70 years later, another convicted candidate ran for the president from jail: political fringe and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche.
LaRouche was no stranger to campaigning — he ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 — but his 1992 campaign from federal prison garnered particular attention.
USA Today reported in 2019 that in the lead-up to the 1992 election, LaRouche was behind bars serving a 15-year sentence for committing mail fraud and campaign fraud conspiracy, the latter involving $30 million in loans from supporters that prosecutors said LaRouche had never attempted to repay. But that didn’t stop him from seeking out the Democratic Party nomination.
When Bill Clinton won the primary, LaRouche switched to the National Economic Recovery ticket, campaigning on overhauling the world’s financial and baking systems. He ultimately received over 26,000 votes in the election, about 0.02% of the popular vote.
Beyond his economic viewpoints, LaRouche’s other beliefs often played into conspiracy theories and apocalyptic visions about the world, Reuters reported in 2019. He had a variety of confounding views of the AIDS crisis —including that it was first spread by the International Monetary Fund — and believed the Holocaust was “mythical,” Reuters and USA Today reported.
What would it look like for Trump to campaign from prison?
While Debs and LaRouche were both unsuccessful in their campaigns, they were still able to run for president while behind bars. Their supporters, running mates, and parties spread the word, bolstering their messages when they couldn’t.
If Trump goes to prison, he “would be subject to the same rules as other prisoners, which could restrict their communications and ability to appear at events,” Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former US attorney, previously told Insider. “He would need to rely on proxies to campaign for him.”
It’s not clear, even if Justice Juan Merchan sentences Trump to prison, if the former president will serve his sentence before the election. Trump’s lawyers could request that the sentence be stayed pending an appeal — pushing the possibility of him having to report to prison far beyond Election Day.
One thing is certain: The Secret Service would stay by Trump’s side.
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