- Former President Donald Trump was convicted on 34 counts in New York.
- Now a convicted felon, he is also the presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2024.
- A presidential candidate can still run for office even if he or she has been convicted of a crime.
Donald Trump is now officially a convicted felon. But can he still become president?
Short answer: Yes, according to the Constitution.
A New York jury found the former president guilty on 34 counts on Thursday, reigniting a wave of questions about what that means for his 2024 presidential campaign.
A presidential candidate can still run for office even if he or she has been convicted of a crime, according to the US Constitution.
Article II of the Constitution sets out the requirements for any presidential candidate: he must be at least 35 years old, he must have resided in the United States for at least 14 years and he must be a US citizen of birth.
The Constitution does not prohibit presidential candidates who have been indicted or convicted of crimes.
In fact, the Constitution doesn’t even disqualify presidential candidates who are incarcerated, legal experts previously told Insider.
Two presidential candidates – Eugene Debs in 1920 and Lyndon LaRouche in 1992 – ran from behind bars for the Oval Office, but neither won. Debs was serving time in federal prison for violating the Espionage Act, and LaRouche had been convicted of mail fraud and election fraud conspiracy.
The jury found Trump guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records before the 2016 election to conceal an alleged affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels.
The jury’s decision to convict Trump makes him the first former president in U.S. history to be convicted of a crime. Trump has denied the affair and any wrongdoing, saying he was a “very innocent man” and was the target of his political enemies.
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