US Election: Can Trump still be president if convicted?

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican Party nominee for the November 2024 US presidential election, is no stranger to the courtroom. In January 2024, a jury in New York ruled that he would have to pay writer E. Jean Carroll millions of dollars in damages for sexually abusing and then defaming her, a decision that Trump is appealing. That was a civil case.

Now, Trump is about to become the first former US president ever to go on trial for criminal charges. The case, which will be heard in a New York court beginning on April 15, centres on whether he paid hush money to bury stories about an extramarital sexual encounter with a porn star to protect his 2016 campaign for the White House.

It’s the first of four criminal trials — two state and two federal — that Trump has coming up. The other state case centres on alleged attempts to overturn his loss in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election; one federal case charges that he knowingly pushed election fraud lies in 2020 to try to stay in power; and other charges that he illegally retained classified government documents when he left the White House, a violation of the Presidential Records Act. Yes. No matter how any of these cases end, Trump will still be able to run for president. The US Constitution sets only three eligibility requirements for persons wanting the job: They must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, be at least 35 years old and have resided in the US for at least 14 years. Nowhere does it say that a convicted criminal cannot run for or become president.

“There are several arguments over whether a presidential candidate who is indicted or is involved in an ongoing legal case should still run for office,” Laura Merrifield Wilson, associate professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis, told DW in December 2023. “But those are based on morals, judgement and preferences, not overt laws or procedural barriers.”

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution states that people who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after taking an oath to support the constitution are disqualified from holding “any office, civil or military, under the United States.” Activists who want Trump disqualified under this clause say the then-president’s actions in the run-up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol constitute participation in an insurrection. They say his lies about how Democrats stole the election encouraged the right-wing mob that stormed the US Capitol that day.

Attempts have been launched to have Trump removed from primary ballots in a number of states under this amendment, “which was originally used to prevent secessionists from returning to their government positions after the American Civil War,” explained former DW journalist Brandon Conradis, now a campaign editor with political news site The Hill.

But in March 2024, the Supreme Court struck down one such attempt in Colorado, saying states do not have the authority to bar individuals from running for federal office.

The “responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress,” wrote the Supreme Court in the opinion that accompanied its verdict. The decision thus voided similar attempts in other states. Since Congress is split, with Republicans holding the majority in the House of Representatives and Democrats having a one-seat majority in the Senate, it seems highly unlikely that Trump will be disqualified under the 14th Amendment.