When FBI agents dramatically raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and seized boxes of documents it raised serious questions about the former president’s future White House aspirations.
If Trump is charged and convicted over his handling of classified documents following his departure from the Oval Office, would it prevent him from running for president in 2024?
The Republican’s highly anticipated run for a second term as president could hinge on the interpretation of a law, Section 2071 of Title 18 of the United States Code.
It states that anyone who has federal documents and “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies or destroys the same” is in violation of that law.
The punishment for that violation is a prison sentence of up to three years and a fine. The law also says anyone convicted must also stand down from their office “and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”
But experts say that it’s the US Constitution and not Congress that sets out who can run for president. And the only restrictions included in the Constitution are that they must be natural-born US citizens, be at least 35 years old, and have lived in the US for at least 14 years.
“We’re going to see litigation all the way to the Supreme Court obviously if this becomes an issue in the 2024 election,” Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, told USA Today.
Previous questions about Mr Trump’s ability to run for federal office again were raised after he became the first president in US history to be impeached twice by the House of Representatives.
But that doesn't mean that he is done with politics and now he has hinted that he may run for the White House again in 2024, telling his supporters they should have “hope”.
The ex-president is free to run again for office as he was acquitted in the Senate for a second time in February 2021.
And he dropped his strongest hint yet in a new interview with daughter-in-law Lara Trump on her podcast The Right View.
“You do have hope, that I can tell you,” Mr Trump said in his first on-camera interview since leaving Washington DC in January.
“You do have hope. We love our country — this country. We all owe a lot to our country but now we have to help our country.”
Ms Trump then asked him if his supporters would ever get to attend another MAGA rally.
“Oh yeah, sure, I think so. In fact, we’re thinking about doing one relatively soon just to let everybody know that there’s hope in the future,” he added.
This all became a real possibility when the Senate failed to convict Mr Trump at his trial on 13 February after the shortest impeachment trial in presidential history.
Mr Trump was impeached for an unprecedented second time in January in the House by a vote of 232-197, with 10 Republicans joining Democrats against him.
He was found guilty by the Democratic-dominated House of Representatives on one charge of incitement for urging his supporters to "fight like hell" before they attacked the Capitol on 6 January and tried to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's election victory.
If the Senate had also voted to convict Mr Trump then he could have been barred from ever standing again. However, only seven Republicans voted to convict along with all 50 Democrats on 13 February – 10 fewer than the two-thirds majority needed to find the former president guilty.
Under the Constitution, “judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honour, trust or profit under the United States.”
However, the recent announcement that the Manhattan District Attorney, Cy Vance, has convened a grand jury in the investigation into Mr Trump’s business dealings has prompted questions once again as to whether a 2024 run is possible.
As it currently stands, Mr Trump could run again. If he is convicted of a crime, it is still possible he could run. Over the course of history three people have launched presidential bids while incarcerated, while Slate reported legal professor Kate Shaw as saying: “When we’re talking about federal office, the limitations would really be political, not legal.”
“The Constitution actually is really clear about what the qualifications to run for president, or a member of Congress or Senate are.”
Only three elected officials, former federal judges West Humphreys, Robert Archibald, and Thomas Porteous, have ever been permanently barred from holding future office in American history.
The Constitution does not specify if the vote to disqualify needs a super majority, but the Senate has in the past used a simple majority for disqualification.
Before the impeachment trial even began 45 out of 50 Republican Senators voted that it was not constitutional and should not go ahead, which made it a long shot to reach the two-thirds required to convict.
While the 2024 presidential election is a long way off, Mr Trump remains the most popular figure in his party, with 42 per cent of Republicans saying they would vote for him in four years, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll.
This was down from 54 per cent in the wake of the Capitol riot but still put him ahead of other potential candidates, such as Mike Pence with 16 per cent, Donald trump Jr with 6 per cent, Ted cruz with six per cent, six per cent for Mitt Romney and five per cent for Nikki Haley.
