CNN
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The never-ending legal problems swirling around former President Donald Trump are already taking center stage in his freshly announced 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump himself, in his speech declaring his candidacy on Tuesday, ranted about how he was a “victim” of the “weaponization of the justice system,” as he railed against the search the FBI executed of his Florida home as part of a criminal investigation into the mishandling of documents from his White House.
Regardless of whether Trump’s criminal exposure politically undermines his campaign or rallies his supporters, the investigations that could implicate him – which also include federal and state-level probes into 2020 election subversion gambits – won’t likely pose any legal barrier to his candidacy.
It is unlikely that even a conviction would disqualify him from the ballot, according to legal experts.
“It might be a practical barrier, it might be a fundraising barrier, but those are political questions, not legal ones,” said Derek Muller, an election law professor at University of Iowa College of Law.
On the flip side, Trump’s candidacy for president doesn’t, by itself, give him any additional legal protections in the probes. But it does create a more complicated political and practical environment for investigators to navigate.
This question has not been fully settled by the courts, but the general consensus is that neither an indictment nor a conviction would legally prevent Trump from being elected.
Not only have convicted felons run for federal office in the past, but at least one ran for president successfully from prison: Eugene Debs, a perennial socialist candidate for the White House in the early 20th century, won more than 900,000 votes in a 1920 presidential campaign he ran while incarcerated on an espionage conviction.
The reason why it is widely believed a conviction wouldn’t preclude Trump’s return to the White House is because of a mainstream legal argument that only the Constitution sets the standards candidates must meet to be president.
“It’s pretty widely accepted that the qualifications to serve as president are enumerated in the Constitution,” Muller said. “And just being…
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