Is Trump legally qualified to be a presidential candidate?

[Josh]

For example, here on this forum it took me only a couple of minutes to find these examples of posters here using the term to describe people who have not yet been convicted of felonies in a court of law.

Josh and Grace have objected to Trump being described as a criminal because he has not yet been convicted. Let's see how they and others here have used the term on this forum in other contexts. In every example below the term is being used to describe people who have not yet been convicted of felonies:

I’ll review my posts, but in short you are wrong - I referred to people already convicted.

These are illegal guns and have been since 1968. The only solution here is for law enforcement to start actually enforcing the law.
That means controversial things like profiling suspects likely to have an illegal gun, stop and frisk, no more easy bail, and strict sentencing of violent criminals. All things that have stopped in the last 10 years.

Sentencing is what happens after a conviction.

If you don’t want criminals shooting you with illegal guns, the laws have to be enforced against them. That means locking them up and depriving them of “civil liberties”.

Of course not everyone running around shooting people is a convicted criminal but most are.

Under Biden we seem to have a crime wave of illegals into the country and committing murders (or worse). This seems to be a good argument on its own for shutting the border down and not letting more violent criminals into the country.

Yes, many of them are guilty of crimes in their home countries. And many more commit crimes here.

Government corruption is endemic in Mexico (and dare I say much of Latin America). Eventually this kind of rife corruption leads to control by criminals instead of a democracy. This is one reason I am opposed to moving the population en masse from these kind of states into America, since it means the same sort of corruption will show up here.

Yes, the drug cartels running things in eg Mexico often have convictions and extensive prison networks.

You do have a point that some states, such as California and Illinois, have decided not to prosecute things like offences committed using illegal guns and instead let criminals go free who reoffend over and over, despite harsh laws about breaking gun laws being on the books.

I think that should stop, and activist DAs need to be removed who refuse to enforce existing laws against quality-of-life crimes and violent crimes. The amount of (illegal) gun violence in Chicago is ridiculous. Yet the new mayor of Chicago has promised to enforce even fewer laws than his predecessor.

Someone who is caught, charged, has a trial or plea, and then gets no sentence is still a criminal.

The simple fact is, people like Biden and Trump aren’t “criminals”, despite what their political foes are constantly claiming.

[Grace]

Josh and Grace have objected to Trump being described as a criminal because he has not yet been convicted.

What I objected to was, being reprimanded for saying the Biden Family is a crime family. The reason given was that the Biden Family hasn't been Convicted of a crime. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

[Ken]

Josh and Grace have objected to Trump being described as a criminal because he has not yet been convicted.

What I objected to was, being reprimanded for saying the Biden Family is a crime family. The reason given was that the Biden Family hasn't been Convicted of a crime. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

It doesn't bother me if you want to label Joe Biden a criminal but I would at least expect you to be able to articulate what specific crimes he is accused of.

But everyone (including me) is expansive with the label "criminal" when it doesn't involve pet politicians. For example, wasn't this you?

Add to that, a world of open borders, and a very special gift to violent homicidal maniac criminals, such as the one who killed Laiken Riley.

The person accused of killing Laiken Riley hasn't been convicted of any felonies and hasn't even stood trial yet.

[Robert]

Calling a specific person a criminal needs to have evidence or a conviction. Using the term in a general sense saying "criminals" does not. It is used to convey a concept, not deciding someone's guilt directly.

Now lets get back on topic.

[Bootstrap]

Now lets get back on topic.

Could you please clarify what the topic is, and what is on or off topic?

A few pages back, I suggested that the topic of this thread is "Is Trump legally qualified to be a presidential candidate?", which the Supreme Court seems to have settled. Is that the topic?

[Robert]

Could you please clarify what the topic is

Is Trump legally qualified to be a presidential candidate?

[Ken]

Now lets get back on topic.

Could you please clarify what the topic is, and what is on or off topic?

A few pages back, I suggested that the topic of this thread is "Is Trump legally qualified to be a presidential candidate?", which the Supreme Court seems to have settled. Is that the topic?

The Supreme Court didn't settle the question. They said only Congress could settle the question, not state courts or individual state secretaries of state.

[Bootstrap]

Now lets get back on topic.

Could you please clarify what the topic is, and what is on or off topic?

A few pages back, I suggested that the topic of this thread is "Is Trump legally qualified to be a presidential candidate?", which the Supreme Court seems to have settled. Is that the topic?

The Supreme Court didn't settle the question. They said only Congress could settle the question, not state courts or individual state secretaries of state.

This feels like wrangling over words to me. Here's what the Supreme Court said:

Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse.

If Congress decides to entertain the question, it could decide that Trump is not legally qualified. That seems highly unlikely. Unless Congress acts, he won't be disqualified under Section 3.

And in general, there are few reasons to expect Trump will not be on the ballot. But a very few open possibilities.

Can Trump run if he is convicted?

This is the simplest question of the bunch. The answer is yes.

The Constitution sets very few eligibility requirements for presidents. They must be at least 35 years old, be “natural born” citizens and have lived in the United States for at least 14 years.

There are no limitations based on character or criminal record. While some states prohibit felons from running for state and local office, these laws do not apply to federal offices.

Could the party replace him on the ticket?

Now that Mr. Trump has secured a majority of delegates to the Republican convention, the party has no mechanism to nominate somebody else. Under the party’s official convention rules, if a delegate tries to support someone other than the person the primary results bound them to, “such support shall not be recognized.”

Nor have top Republicans shown any interest in another nominee.

If he were forced to withdraw from the race after the convention, party leaders could replace him then; they considered doing so in 2016 after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which he bragged about grabbing women’s genitals. But this is highly unlikely given how vigorously the party has circled the wagons around him.

What happens if Trump is elected from prison?

No one knows.

“We’re so far removed from anything that’s ever happened,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s just guessing.”

Legally, Mr. Trump would remain eligible to be president even if he were imprisoned. The Constitution says nothing to the contrary. “I don’t think that the framers ever thought we were going to be in this situation,” Professor Levinson said.

In practice, the election of an incarcerated president would create a legal crisis that would almost certainly need to be resolved by the courts.

What if he’s elected with a case still in progress?

Again, no one knows, particularly when it comes to the New York and Georgia cases.

In the two federal cases, a likely outcome would be that a Trump-appointed attorney general would withdraw the charges.

The Justice Department does not indict sitting presidents, a policy outlined in a 1973 memo, during the Nixon era. It has never had reason to develop a policy on what to do with an incoming president who has already been indicted. But the rationale for not indicting sitting presidents — that it would interfere with their ability to perform their duties — applies just as well in this hypothetical scenario.

[RZehr]

Now lets get back on topic.

Could you please clarify what the topic is, and what is on or off topic?

A few pages back, I suggested that the topic of this thread is "Is Trump legally qualified to be a presidential candidate?", which the Supreme Court seems to have settled. Is that the topic?

The Supreme Court didn't settle the question. They said only Congress could settle the question, not state courts or individual state secretaries of state.

The Supreme Court also didn’t rule that you or I are legally qualified or not. It also didn’t rule that Joe Biden or any of the previous 20 Presidents were legally qualified.That doesn’t mean that none of them were not legally qualified. We are in fact, both legally qualified. And so is Trump at this point.

A lack of Supreme Court ruling is immaterial to anyone’s legal qualifications. That is not the qualifying system we have in the US.

[Ken]

Could you please clarify what the topic is, and what is on or off topic?

A few pages back, I suggested that the topic of this thread is "Is Trump legally qualified to be a presidential candidate?", which the Supreme Court seems to have settled. Is that the topic?

The Supreme Court didn't settle the question. They said only Congress could settle the question, not state courts or individual state secretaries of state.

The Supreme Court also didn’t rule that you or I are legally qualified or not. It also didn’t rule that Joe Biden or any of the previous 20 Presidents were legally qualified.That doesn’t mean that none of them were not legally qualified. We are in fact, both legally qualified. And so is Trump at this point.

A lack of Supreme Court ruling is immaterial to anyone’s legal qualifications. That is not the qualifying system we have in the US.

I think you are misstating things.

Under the Constitution there are various qualification criteria for president.

You must be a natural born US citizen
You must be at least 35 years old
You must have not already served 2 terms
And you must not have engaged in insurrection against the US after previously having sworn allegiance to the US Constitution...etc. (14th Amendment)

What the Supreme Court said is that the ambiguities contained in that 14th Amendment clause are properly the purview of Congress (and only Congress) to determine. And that to the extent that their needs to be clarification it is up to Congress to do so through statute.

Basically they punted. Which they didn't have to do. The Supreme Court is perfectly happy to step in and determine the meanings of different constitutional provisions without the help of Congress. They have done so many times (for example the 2nd Amendment).

And note: None of this actually goes to eligibility to be a CANDIDATE for president. The Constitutional provisions are actually on holding the office of the president. So theoretically someone could get elected president and then Congress or the courts determine that they are ineligible to serve.