Juan Merchan, the judge of the case Stormy Daniels,will read on July 11 the sentence that he plans to impose on Donald Trump for the 34 electoral crimes 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 among the rest: 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 her legal troubles influences voter sentiment (and, according to the latest polls, that seems unlikely), the The US Constitution not only does 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 is already in prison, 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 falls within that definition, is also ruled out: in the four cases opened against him, the former president faces 91 charges, and none of them is that of insurrection.
Trump is also shielded by a recent ruling by the Supreme Court, which considered inappropriate 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. 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 enslaved people 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 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 mansion in Palm Beach. The law of that State derives from the regulations that govern the place where he was sentenced, NYin this case, where prisoners are not prohibited from exercising their electoral rights.
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 do so with a former president 24 hours a day, seven days a week, regardless of where he is.
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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 for making speeches critical of the United States’ role in World War I. He didn’t make it to the White House; That time he swept Republican Warren Harding.
In Spain, the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime prevents anyone convicted by a final sentence from standing for election 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.
