Even if threatened by a lawsuit, Trump could still target the US presidency

The billionaire, who wiped out the news as “the continuation of the biggest witch hunt in American history,” recalled the popularity he gained among Republicans from his first reaction … and that we were trying to thwart a new presidential attempt.

He wrote Tuesday evening that the announcement of this grand jury was “interesting” on the same day as “the poll that indicates I am far ahead of the Republican presidency and the 2024 election.”

According to several American media outlets, a large arbitral tribunal has been set up to determine whether the trial of Manhattan attorney Cyrus Vance in connection with Donald Trump and his team can be justified. A condition that lasts six months, according to the Washington Post.

The attorney general has been investigating the possible accounting manipulations of the Donald Trump-holding Trump organization since 2019.

A former president has never been charged in a criminal case in the United States.

There are no legal restrictions

The issue is “very serious” for Donald Trump, underscoring Howard Sweeper, a professor of American politics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

But he told the AFP that the 45th president of the United States could escape prosecution because, with this giant arbitral tribunal, nothing indicates that Cyrus Vance is specifically targeting him. He could actually target collaborators of the Trump organization or the former US president who are within that group.

It is clear that big criminal charges are on the horizon for “officials at the top of the Trump team.”

But despite the allegations, the real estate mogul will have no legal problem trying to run the presidential campaign again.

AFP Rick Hassan, an expert in electoral law at the University of California, explains that the laws governing federal elections “do not require that a candidate for the presidency or Congress be prosecuted.”

Thus in 2000, Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens represented himself when he was indicted by a major arbitral tribunal in a corruption case. He lost.

Candidate even in jail?

“Criminal charges do not prevent him from running for federal office. No law prohibits it,” says Steven Heofner, a law professor at Ohio University.

In this state, a convicted and former Democrat MP and later independent Jim Trophicant represented himself from his cell in the House of Representatives in 2002. He lost.

What if a candidate wins the presidential election from prison?

“This is going to be a remarkable situation,” Brian Cald, a law professor at the University of Michigan, responded. But “I imagine that when a judge pronounces his sentence, he will take it into account to find alternatives.”

Howard Schweiber notes that this event is “grossly impossible”, especially for the “extremely rare rarity of long prison sentences for financial crimes, especially for politically powerful defendants” and the long election road that the firsts have to cross from the first election.

Upgrade his forces

There is no doubt that Donald Trump’s most loyal voters will be loyal to him.

Sure, it would offend him among moderate voters, but “there really isn’t a center today,” says Brian Colt. “For 99% of the people, the question is not what matters: they are divided between those who promote Trump and those who promote Trump, and any question about the intricacies of the law is completely irrelevant.”

Howard Schwaber, the former Republican president, says he has “always enjoyed the support of the hardline center of supporters, and any fraudulent accusation for them strengthens their allegiance.”

After all, didn’t the New Yorker tell himself he could shoot someone standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan without voting?

When all of these scenes are so impossible, Mr. Colt argues, “It is very significant that they will not drown a candidate.”