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You've convinced me that Trump might actually go to jail. My question is, can he still run in the primary if he's under indictment? If so, could he run if convicted?I think there's a relatively low probability that he would ever go to jail. Mostly because there's a pretty low likelihood that he'd ever get convicted.
First there's the political side. He probably wouldn't go to trial until after the 2024 election. And if Trump were elected President in 2024, he would certainly pardon himself
and the DOJ would stand down the prosecution. If another Republican is elected President, Trump will get pardoned as well.
Then there's the difficulty of getting a conviction. When I wrote my earlier posts about how this tape might affect the likelihood of conviction, I
assumed that Trump was actually telling something close to the truth in his recorded statements. That he did, as he claimed, have a classified document in his possession that supported his position. That was a mistake. Apparently the Feds subpoenaed Trump for the document, though, and his lawyers have said they can't find it:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/02/politics/donald-tru...Which raises the distinct possibility that Trump was just making up the existence of the document. That he was just lying - trying to bluff the journalists into not reporting the narrative Trump was trying to stop, by falsely claiming he had the receipts to refute it. He might have just made the whole thing up.
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Finally, even if Trump were convicted of a crime, wasn't pardoned, and the conviction stuck on appeal, sentencing him to a term in jail seems very unlikely also. The security logistics of putting a former POTUS into a correctional facility would be insanely difficult to manage. Far more likely would be a for a judge to sentence him to house arrest - if not necessarily at his own house, which is far too luxurious, but perhaps in a residence on a military base.
