Julien Tourreille, a researcher at the University of Quebec, explains that there is nothing in the Constitution that prevents it.
Can Donald Trump still run in the presidential election? The French radio station RFI interviewed Julien Tourreillea researcher from the Raoul-Dandurand chair at the University of Quebec in Montreal, with this concern as a result of the decision of the New York Prosecutor’s Office to indict the former president for an alleged illegal payment for buy the silence of a porn actress in 2016.
For this specialist there is nothing in the Constitution that prevents Trump from running in the next elections after this court decision.
Although Trump has become the first former president of the United States to have to answer before the criminal courts of that country, his indictment does not throw away his aspiration to the White House, Julien Toureille explained to RFI.
“There is nothing in the law or in the US Constitution that prevents them from doing so. An accused person, even a defendant, can stand for election.” This specialist estimates that That is one of the gaps in the US Constitution.
More points on DeSantis
On the contrary, this decisione has allowed Trump to score points regarding his alleged Republican adversary Ron DeSantis.
“There is no doubt that this decision it will be an incentive for their base,” says Tourreille.
At the moment, in any case, the Republican Party as a whole has come out to support him. Trump, meanwhile, calls himself the victim of a witch hunt.
As of this Friday, the formal indictment that will probably be released on Tuesday, when Trump appears before the Court in Manhattan, was not yet available.
It is not known exactly what crimes Trump will be accused of. However, the CNN chain spoke this Friday of more of 30 charges against him for “commercial fraud”.
Tourreille explains that what is being blamed on Trump, according to what is known so far, is have falsified business documentssince he made the reimbursement of his lawyer, who had paid the sum to the porn actress Stormy Daniels, falsifying the accounts of one of his companies.
That forgery, according to Manhattan prosecutors, would have generated a violation of campaign finance laws. It would be, then, two crimes.
Both Trump’s lawyers and his entourage have announced that they will respond favorably to the summons of the Manhattan court.
There is therefore no foreseeable rejection by the former president or a legal conflict between the jurisdiction of Manhattan and that of Florida, where Trump currently resides.
Tourreille also underlines that Ron DeSantis, Florida governor and Trump’s probable rival in the Republican Party primaries for the 2024 elections, announced that he would not collaborate with the Manhattan authorities and that he would finally refuse to hand the former president over to the justice of NY.
Therefore, a long legal battle can be expected which, obviously, will mean that the matter will not be resolved before the 2024 presidential elections, concludes Tourreille.
R.F.I.
