How Trump could be elected president, govern from prison

If former President Donald Trump is convicted and sentenced to prison time in the Stormy Daniels “hush money” case, he could still run for president — and even run the country — from behind bars, but not without a dizzying array of complications, according to legal experts.

The 76-year-old billionaire made history Thursday when a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict him in a sprawling fraud case, making him the first former US president to face criminal charges.

Trump’s attorney, Joe Tacopina, revealed that the former leader of the free world, who is vying for a second non-consecutive White House term in 2024, will face 34 counts of business fraud.

Trump has given no sign that the indictment, which Tacopina admitted “shocked” his famous client, has shaken his resolve to regain the nation’s highest office.

If Trump were found guilty and incarcerated, nothing in the US Constitution would prevent him from carrying on with his campaign for the White House, according to nine legal experts interviewed by Business Insider.

“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,” said Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

In fact, there are at least two historical precedents Trump can look to.

In 1920, Socialist candidate Eugene Debs ran for president while serving a 10-year term for sedition at a federal prison in Georgia.

Debs had been convicted under the later-repealed Sedition Act of 1918 for opposing US involvement in World War I.

Despite being confined to a prison cell, Debs received close to a million votes, 3.5% of the popular total at that time. His sentence was commuted to time served by then-President Warren Harding in December 1921.

In 1992, conspiracy theorist and far-right activist Lyndon LaRouche ran for president while serving time on a mail fraud conviction.

For Trump, actively campaigning from behind bars could prove challenging, given his taste for large-scale rallies.

Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former US attorney, told Insider that the ex-president would be bound by rules that would restrict his ability to appear at events in person, forcing him to rely on surrogates on the campaign trail.

If Trump is unable to stage rallies to rile up potential voters, a crowded field of Republican challengers, likely led by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, could seize the opportunity to draw away donor money and support from the former president.

But even if Trump were to lock down the GOP nomination and win the election while incarcerated, he would have to overcome many hurdles to effectively govern a nation of 332 million people from a cell.

The first step — taking the oath of office — would be easy, since nothing in the Constitution requires a president to be sworn in at any specific place.

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, said that Trump would likely be able to carry out the day-to-day business of the presidency — such as issuing executive orders and pardons, signing and vetoing bills and making political appointments — from lockup.

He could even deliver the State of the Union address to Congress remotely or in written form, as presidents had done for a hundred years in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

But one key question remains: What would happen to the so-called “nuclear football” if the commander-in-chief is in the clink?

The briefcase containing warhead launch codes is expected to be within a president’s reach at all times.

Tribe hypothesized that a military aide could be required to carry the “nuclear football” in a cell adjacent to Trump’s.

As with all living current and former presidents, Trump is protected at all times by Secret Service agents, and that won’t change if he is sent to prison — unless Congress changes the rules.

A former agency official told Insider that that an agent will not likely be sharing a cell with Trump, but would be present on the property to ensure his safety.

Because Trump is currently facing state and not federal charges, he would be powerless to attempt a presidential self-pardon, or pull stings at the federal Bureau of Prisons to improve the conditions of his imprisonment.

Besides the Stormy Daniels case in New York, Trump also faces state and federal investigations into his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and mishandling of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the various investigations into his activities as a “witch hunt.”

Appearing on Fox News Thursday, Tacopina said Trump was “ready to fight.”

Trump is expected to surrender to New York authorities and be arraigned in Manhattan next Tuesday.