Could Trump run for office if convicted and pardon himself if elected?

Donald Trump’s political future had plenty of life left a day after he was indicted on four federal charges in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The 77-year-old former president and current 2024 GOP frontrunner now faces 78 felony charges in three separate cases that could see him sentenced to prison for hundreds of years if convicted.

Additional election interference charges may also be handed down later this month by prosecutors in Georgia.

Trump has vowed to continued his campaign for a second non-consecutive White House term, and had actually seen his poll numbers buoyed by his indictments.

No US president had ever before been hit with criminal charges, but there is nothing in the Constitution that specifically bars Trump from seeking office if he were convicted, a scenario that is not without precedent.

In 1920, perennial Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs ran for the White House while imprisoned for sedition in connection with protesting US involvement in World War I.

He received 913,000 votes, 3.4% of the electorate at that time.

Could Trump pardon himself if elected?

The trickier question is whether Trump could pardon himself if he were convicted and elected.

Presidents are authorized to grant sweeping clemency for federal crimes under the Constitution, which does not specifically address whether chief executives could use that power to pardon themselves — a scenario the nation’s founders likely never envisioned.

Trump would not be able to apply a presidential pardon to a potential conviction in Manhattan, where he faces 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to two women ahead of the 2016 election.

However, he would almost certainly try to apply his presidential powers to any federal convictions related to his Tuesday charges or the 40 felony counts he faces in connection with his hoarding of national security documents — something he discussed with aides in the final days of his first term.

“Whether he can do so is untested. The Supreme Court may have to weigh in,” UCLA law professor Richard Hasen, a leading election law expert, told CNN.

“There is not a clear-cut answer,” Paul Schiff Berman, a constitutional law expert at The George Washington University Law School, told NY1.

“Most constitutional scholars believe that probably the answer is no, you can’t pardon yourself, because pardoning is meant to be an act of grace bestowed on someone else,” added Berman, who added that there was “nothing in the Constitution” to specifically bar the practice.

Aziz Huq, a constitutional law expert at the University of Chicago Law School, told the station there would be a case to be made that such a pardon would be an “abuse of … power.”

“However, I don’t see any meaningful mechanism whereby limits on the pardon power could be imposed,” Huq went on. “I don’t think that there is any practical way for someone who thinks that the pardon was unconstitutional, for raising that concern, either in a court or some other forum.”

If Trump was elected before his trial finished, he could also instruct his Justice Department to dismiss the case, Robert Ray, a lawyer who defended Trump in his first impeachment trial, told CNN.

One thing is clear under the Constitution — if Trump was convicted of a crime before the 2024 election, either by the feds or Manhattan prosecutors, he would be barred from voting for himself.

The closest parallel to the current scenario in US history came in 1974, when President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, for any crimes he may have committed in connection with the Watergate scandal.

Ford was pilloried for his decision at the time, but defenders of the move have claimed it helped Americans move on from the trauma of the scandal and Nixon’s resignation.

Several of Trump’s GOP rivals — notably entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — have indicated they would be inclined to pardon him if they won the presidency.