Former President Trump made history last year as the first of the country's chief executives to be charged with a crime.
This week he will add another chapter: becoming the first former president to be tried on criminal charges.
And later this year, he could surpass even that if he becomes the first candidate with a criminal record to win the presidency.
Here's a look at the unprecedented legal questions the Trump situation presents.
Could Trump become president after being convicted of a crime?
Yeah.
There is nothing in the Constitution or federal law that prevents a felon from holding the highest office in the land.
While many federal employees would not be hired if they had a felony conviction on their record, the Constitution sets out only a few basic requirements for the chief executive.
“No person except a natural-born citizen…shall be eligible for the office of President,” it says.
While today's voters worry about candidates who are too old, the men who wrote the 1787 document tried to screen out those who were too young or lived abroad. A president must have “reached the age of 35 and resided for 14 years in the United States.”
Elizabeth Wydra, president of the progressive Constitutional Accountability Center, says it's a mistake to assume the legal system will stand in Trump's way.
“There is nothing stopping him from running for president and being elected, even if he is in prison at the time of the election,” he said.
By the way, the law is not so generous to voters, he noted.
“Having a felony on your record may prevent you from voting for president in some states,” Wydra said.
How is it possible that the Constitution lacks a good conduct clause?
Historians say the eminent figures who wrote the Constitution relied on electors to choose the president.
They did not foresee that a disreputable character would ever gain the loyalty of these voters, who were typically property-owning white men like themselves. Alexander Hamilton, who helped devise the electoral college system, expressed confidence that he would produce “characters preeminent in ability and virtue” who would earn the “esteem and confidence of the whole Union.”
Within a few decades, that system was gradually replaced by one in which voters decide state by state on lists of electors who are committed to a candidate.
Doesn't the 14th Amendment disqualify candidates who “participated in the insurrection”?
Yes, but Trump was not charged with insurrection after the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
And the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in March that states acting on their own cannot enforce this provision.
Congress would have to act to enforce that provision.
Has anyone ever run for president from prison?
Yeah.
Eugene Debs ran five times as a Socialist Party presidential candidate, winning nearly a million votes in 1920, while serving a prison sentence for sedition.
Debs had spoken out against the World War I draft and earned the ire of President Wilson. But soon after arriving at the White House, President Harding commuted the sentence.
What are the chances of Trump being convicted before the election?
It is very possible.
Trump faces four sets of criminal charges.
The two most serious cases involve federal charges brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith. He accused Trump in Washington of conspiring to subvert the counting of electoral votes after Trump lost the November 2020 election.
In a separate case, Trump was accused of leaving the White House with highly classified documents, storing them at his Florida home and refusing to return them when requested.
Both cases are moving slowly and are not expected to be tried and completed before the November elections.
What will happen to federal cases if Trump wins the election?
If Trump were elected president again, the chief executive could order that federal prosecutions be dropped.
He could also grant pardons to all of his aides and allies, as well as the hundreds of his supporters who stormed the Capitol to prevent the certification of President Biden's victory.
What about the Georgia election interference case?
In a third criminal case, Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, filed a sprawling racketeering charge against Trump and 18 others for allegedly conspiring to alter the vote count there.
That case has been derailed by allegations that Willis hired a romantic partner to lead the prosecution.
So which case is most likely to reach a conclusion before the election?
The “hush money” case that will be tried in New York may be the least serious of all, but it has the best chance of being decided by a jury before the election.
The state trial was to begin Monday with jury selection.
Trump was accused of 34 payments made to his former lawyer Michael Cohen for what was listed on the company's books as legal fees.
But the payments included reimbursing Cohen of $130,000 he had given adult film actress Stormy Daniels to prevent her from revealing an alleged past sexual encounter with Trump.
This record-keeping offense can be punished as a low-level felony if it can be shown that Trump committed a second offense by trying to conceal campaign contributions that influenced the election. Trump said he was trying to keep the story from his wife.
Could Trump face jail if convicted in hush money case?
Yes, but it is unlikely.
New York lawyers say defendants with no criminal records who are convicted of a nonviolent crime generally receive probation, not jail time.
And even if Trump provoked an irritated judge into making an exception in his case, he could be free on bail while his lawyers appeal the conviction.
Could a re-elected president, Trump, pardon himself in the New York hush money case?
No.
The president's power to pardon is broad, but it applies only to federal crimes, not crimes under state law. The same would apply to the Georgia case.
What happens to the New York case if Trump wins the election?
That's not clear.
New York judges could stay the case if Trump is re-elected. It has been Justice Department policy for years that presidents should not be distracted by civil and criminal cases while serving as president, although such cases have been allowed to proceed to some extent.
The Justice Department, under a re-elected President Trump, is likely to assert that federal law is supreme and that the president should be protected against such cases while in office.
The Constitution says that “the judges of each state shall be subject” to the laws enacted “under the authority of the United States.”
The Georgia case would likely also be stayed.
But there is no clear precedent.
“We are certainly in new territory,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center in New York. “We don't know because we don't have any experience with this situation.”
