Elections in the United States: Why could Donald Trump go to jail after losing the election?
For Donald Trump, defeat in the election is not just a political humiliation. The president risks much more.
The investigations into the scandals that have occurred during his tenure suggest, according to experts, that the president may face a complex personal financial situation, in addition to criminal proceedings, when he has to leave the White House on January 20.
So far, in the face of the possibility of a criminal investigation against him, he is protected by the immunity afforded by the position: incumbent presidents cannot be prosecuted.
However, projected November 3 election results from across the country give Democrat Joe Biden 306 votes in the Electoral College (out of 538), a number that far exceeds the 270 he needs to be declared the winner of the contest. .
For his part, Trump has 232 votes and his options to stay in power depend on the success of the allegations of fraud that his campaign team has formulated, although without presenting evidence.
Which leads to the obvious question: what if he's no longer the president?
Immunity in office
"I think there is a possibility that Trump will be charged with criminal charges," Bennett Gershman, professor of Constitutional Law at Pace University, who served for a decade as a prosecutor in the state of New York, tells BBC Mundo.
"The charges that the president could face have to do with bank fraud, tax fraud, money laundering, electoral fraud," among others, Gershman says, citing "all the information that has come to light in the media about his conduct. financial ".
As if that weren't enough, Trump faces huge financial risks, including, according to US media reports, massive personal debt and difficulties with his business empire.
The New York Times said that in the next four years Trump has to repay more than $ 300 million in loans, at a time when some of his personal investments are not going through the best of times.
And after defeat, your creditors may be less flexible in demanding payment on those obligations.
The White House has acted as a barrier to the president's legal and financial problems, his critics warn. With that wall disappearing, Trump may face tough days.
He does not admit faults
The president claims to have been the victim of numerous conspiracies by his enemies to falsely accuse him of having committed crimes before and during his time in power.
Trump categorically denies any wrongdoing.
And he underscores having succeeded in the investigations carried out by the Justice Department into the numerous scandals that have framed his administration, as well as the impeachment that Congress carried out earlier this year.
But all these processes were based on the presidential immunity from criminal proceedings. The Justice Department has repeatedly said that a president cannot be criminally prosecuted while in office.
However, these investigations could be the basis for new legal actions against Trump, experts tell BBC Mundo.
"We already know that you may face allegations of voter fraud, as the US Attorney for the Southern District of Manhattan has in effect already named [Trump] as a co-conspirator with Michael Cohen," Gershman says.
The expert refers to the federal investigation against Trump's former personal attorney, Cohen, who in 2018 pleaded guilty to electoral irregularities during the 2016 campaign related to payments made to porn actress Stormy Daniels, who alleges she had an affair with him. President.
During the investigation against Cohen, the prosecution described in its official indictment a then presidential candidate, whom they designated as "Individual 1", allegedly related to that criminal activity.
The US media universally assumed that the prosecution was referring to Trump at the time.
At the time, the event made national news. On December 7, 2018, The New York Times headlined: "Prosecutors Say Trump Directed Illegal Payments During Campaign."
The newspaper added that "federal prosecutors said that President Trump directed illegal payments to avoid a potential sex scandal that threatened his chances of winning the White House in 2016, putting the burden of the Department of Justice behind the accusations previously made by his former lawyer."
The Mueller report
Gershman says it can be assumed that "there may be other charges of obstruction of justice" from the results of the so-called Mueller report.
In 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered his investigation into allegations of Russian government interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
That report found no conclusive evidence that then-candidate Trump's campaign was deliberately collaborating with the Russian government.
However, the report documented a series of controversial actions by the president in response to that investigation.
Mueller said then that the US Congress should decide whether to follow an "impeachment" or impeachment to Trump for alleged obstruction of justice, since the president had immunity from normal channels of criminal justice.
On that occasion, Congress refrained from opening a political trial to Trump, although it did so months later for a different case, this time before versions that said that the president had tried to manipulate the government of Ukraine into investigating alleged irregularities committed by Hunter Biden, the son of President-elect Joe Biden.
In December 2019, the Democratic-majority House of Representatives formally indicted Trump, but the following February, the Republican-majority Senate acquitted him.
Trump was only the third US president in history to face impeachment.
Local and federal charges
As president, Trump could in principle forgive himself for any violation of federal law he may have committed, although there is no history in the country's history of such a situation.
Instead, it has happened that a president who faces the possibility of criminal charges leaves office and is pardoned by his successor.
That was the case in 1974 when Richard Nixon resigned after the Watergate corruption scandal, and his then vice president and successor in office, Gerald Ford, extended him a full court pardon.
"There is very little probability that Trump will face federal charges, as it is to be expected that he will forgive himself," Norman Ornstein, an expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative political research center, tells BBC Mundo.
In a scenario of electoral defeat, if Trump does not dare to self-amnesty, Ornstein says, the president would have some incentive to resign before the end of his term, which falls on January 20, 2021.
In that extreme hypothetical scenario, current Vice President Mike Pence would be in charge to complete the final days of the presidential term and could pardon Trump in advance of any federal crimes he might have committed.
But Trump's potential legal difficulties don't end there, Ornstein says.
The US media have been airing the possibility that, apart from federal charges, Trump also faces criminal charges at the local level, former prosecutor Gershman reminds BBC Mundo.
On November 1, The New Yorker was joining many other US outlets in discussing a scenario in which New York prosecutor Cyrus Vance, who has been investigating the president's private dealings, could eventually charge him with wrongdoing related to his past. as a real estate mogul.
Ornstein agrees, who tells BBC Mundo: "There are aggressive investigations underway by the New York State Attorney General and the New York City District Attorney into tax and other irregularities potentially committed before that Trump was president. "
Unlike federal charges, those at the local level are not eligible for presidential pardon.
A political decision
Experts insist that there is no certainty that the authorities will decide to take these actions against Trump, even if they believe that there is evidence to justify it.
As early as 1974, the government of the time decided that prosecuting Nixon would only extend the agony of the Watergate scandal, and, citing national expediency, preferred to pardon him.
In this regard, Joe Biden said on August 6 in an interview that, if elected president, he would neither oppose nor promote a criminal process against Trump, leaving that decision entirely to the prosecutors of the Justice Department.
If those federal prosecutors, or those of the state of New York, finally decide to advance a process against Trump, it will not be a situation that is quickly resolved.
Due to the previous litigation, a trial could easily take months or even years to start, Gershman tells BBC Mundo
If found guilty on charges such as those that have been discussed, Trump could face a sentence "of years, not months" in prison, the academic warns.
"The law applies to everyone," Gershman recalls.
Ornstein, for his part, suspects that New York prosecutors will continue their investigations against Trump..
