Juan Merchan, the judge of the Stormy Daniels case,will read on July 11 the sentence that it plans to impose on Donald Trump for the 34 crimes of document falsification of which he was found guilty this Thursday by a jury in New York in relation to the black payment to a porn actress in the vicinity of the elections that in 2016 brought him to the White House. In another concatenation of unprecedented events in American history, four days later, on July 15, the Republican National Convention will begin in Milwaukee at which, in all likelihood, Trump will be officially designated as the candidate of the conservative party.
Never before had a former American president faced a criminal case, much less four, nor had he been found guilty, so far, in the first of them. Nor had a candidate for the elections (scheduled for November 5) ever gone through such an ordeal. So among the many questions that arise after a historic verdict, one stands out: will that sentence in any way hinder the path that Trump hopes will take him back to the White House for a second term?
The short answer is no. Unless negative news about his legal troubles influences voter sentiment (and, according to the latest polls, that seems unlikely), the US Constitution not only would not prevent Trump from seeking office; Nor does it contemplate the prohibition of a person convicted by federal justice from being president, not even if he ends up in jail, except if he has ended up in prison for a very specific crime: that of insurrection. And that, although it could be debated in the abstract whether his role in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 fits into that definition, is also ruled out: in the four cases opened against him, the former president faces 91 charges, but none of them are for insurrection.
Trump was also shielded by a recent ruling by the Supreme Court, which considered the attempts of some states, with Colorado in the lead, to remove him from the ballots based on the third section of the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution as having no constitutional basis. It is an addendum to the fundamental text approved in 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War (1861-1865). It served to grant full rights to the slaves of the South and to place a containment dam that would prevent the Confederate rebels from being able to hold public office again and dynamite the system from within.
Trump’s prison sentence, which could mean four years behind bars and many experts see as unlikely, could have consequences in those States that prohibit those convicted of a criminal offense from voting. This is not the case in Florida, where the magnate has his residence set at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach mansion. The law of that State derives from the regulations that govern the place where he was convicted – New York, in this case. And in New York, prisoners are not deprived of exercising their electoral rights.
The Secret Service behind bars?
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Another unsuspected consequence of Trump being sent to prison is that members of the Secret Service designated for his protection would accompany him to prison. American law requires them to accompany a former president 24 hours a day, seven days a week, regardless of where he is, even if that place is behind bars.
To find any precedent for what happened this Thursday with Trump and the options that are open to him on the way to the White House, we must go back more than a century, to the dark case of a candidate named Eugene Debs. He campaigned from prison in 1920, as leader of the Socialist Party of America while serving a sentence for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. He was convicted for making speeches critical of the United States’ role in World War I. He didn’t get to the White House (he only got a million votes); That time he swept Republican Warren Harding. And those numbers invalidate the power of precedent in the case: unlike Trump, who leads in a good handful of polls over President Joe Biden, who is running for re-election, Debs never had any chance of winning.
In Spain, the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime prevents anyone convicted by a final sentence from standing in the elections or accessing the position for which they run. Nor can those who have been sentenced, even if the resolution is not final, to crimes of rebellion, terrorism, against the Public Administration or against the institutions of the State in the event that the conviction establishes the penalty of disqualification from the exercise of suffrage. passive (being elected) that of absolute or special disqualification or suspension from employment or public office.
