Can Donald Trump run for president from prison?

Most likely he can. It has happened before.

On Thursday, a New York grand jury stepped in to indict Donald Trump. It is the first time in American history that a former President of the United States has been indicted on criminal charges.

The case concerns the so-called “hush money” of pornographic actor Stormy Daniels. According to CNN, the charges consist of the above 30 points.

“Whether the indictment is justified or not, it crosses a line in American politics and American legal history,” says Jack L. Goldsmith, Professor of Law at Harvard University New York times.

It is not certain that this will be the last indictment against Trump, who is currently under four major investigations:

• For his role in the attack on Congress on January 6, 2021.
• To keep confidential documents in his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
• To try to influence the election results in the state of Georgia.
• Then the fourth, where he was accused of paying $130,000 in Stormy Daniels, which you can read more about here.

Donald Trump is expected to fly to New York from Florida on Monday. There he will spend the night in Trump Tower, before he is arrested and appears in court at a quarter past two local time.

This is the first time an indictment has been filed against a former President of the United States. But it actually happened that a president still in office was arrested.

We have to go back in time over 150 years ago.

Rough riding with a horse and cart

The year was 1872. The current president is Ulysses S. Grant. On March 13 he was arrested.

Grant (1822-1885) was not just anyone, but is considered one of the greatest generals in US history. He later became the eighteenth president of the United States (1869-1877).

Grant helped rebuild the country after the war. He is also known for his work to improve conditions The country’s population is of African descent.

But he also holds the dubious honor of being the only American president to have been arrested so far. Arrested for hard driving with a horse and buggy, he was arrested on a street corner in Washington, D.C

It may not be the biggest crime in the world, but he ended up paying a $20 fine.

In 1908, the article titled “The Only Policeman Who Arrested a President” appeared in the Washington Evening Star. The story was confirmed in 2012 by then Washington, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier.

The man who stopped Grant for reckless driving was named William H. He was African American and fought for the northern states during the Civil War.

He ran as a presidential candidate from prison

If you were wondering if Donald Trump could have run for president even if he was arrested, this has also happened before.

Then we have to go back to 1920. Here we meet Eugene Victor Debs (1855-1926). He was an American trade unionist and socialist.

Debs worked on the railroad and became interested in workers’ rights early on. In 1897 he helped found the Social Democratic Party.

He ran for president in five elections between 1900 and 1920. In 1920 he was in prison and served a ten-year sentence for sedition, He writes for The Washington Post. He is said to have advocated opposition to conscription, which was introduced in 1917 in connection with the United States’ entry into World War I.

Debs got just 3.4% of the vote. The winner of the 1920 election was Republican Warren G. Harding.

Another recently indicted presidential candidate is Lyndon LaRouche. He ran for president in every election between 1976 and 2004.

LaRouche was convicted of tax and mail fraud in 1988. He ran his 1992 campaign from prison. It didn’t go well, and LaRouche ended up getting about 0.1 percent of the vote—just ahead of the winner, Bill Clinton.

So there are no legal obstacles for Trump to continue his presidential campaign, legal experts tell us Times Magazine.