On May 30, 2024, former President Donald Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection to hush money payments made during the 2016 election.
Trump is now a historical figure in more than one way. His incompetence while in office, and in particular his bungling of the COVID-19 response, already earned him a spot in history books, but his name will now additionally go down in history as the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a felony.
It’s a singular experience brought on by Trump’s rampant criminal behavior, and it places him in a unique position. As the first-ever ex-president to find himself in this position, there’s no concrete precedent about where to go from here. U.S. laws do outline a few details of what Trump is, and isn’t, allowed to do from his new position as a felon, however, and they’ll place some restrictions that the notoriously petulant businessman won’t like one bit.
Can Donald Trump still run for office?
One overarching question looms over America in the wake of Donald Trump’s conviction. He currently persists as the 2024 Republican nominee for president, but his new status as a felon should presumably disqualify him from holding the highest office in the land.
Given the high standard our nation’s leaders are supposed to be held to, a candidate found guilty of 34 felony counts should really be kept as far from the Oval Office as possible. Somehow, despite that fact — and the utter embarrassment of allowing someone who utilized criminal maneuvers to gain the presidency in the first place to remain in the running — it seems the 77-year-old grifter has no intention of stepping down.
According to the laws of our nation, a felony conviction does not disqualify someone from running for office. It does, in a tear-jerkingly hilarious way, disqualify them from several other things, like voting and owning a firearm, but it does not preclude Donald Trump from making another bid for president.
Which essentially guarantees, barring a carefully placed jail sentence or yet more legal pushback, that Donald Trump will be on the ballot this November. Whether or not the conviction will wise up the nation to his criminal tendencies has yet to be determined, but there’s no doubt voters will have plenty to mull over when they arrive at the ballot box.
