Timing matters
No doubt Donald Trump’s lawyers will aim to delay as long as possible. But it is almost certain that Trump will now be tried criminally in the midst of his presidential run. He will make bail, so he won’t be in jail. And he can keep running regardless of the charges against him. In fact, he can keep running even if he is convicted and sitting in a jail cell.
If Trump is elected and takes office before his trial reaches a verdict, he will be able to dismiss the federal charges against himself, because under the Constitution, the Department of Justice answers to the sitting president. (State charges, like those filed in New York and those expected to be filed in Georgia, would remain in place, because they aren’t under federal authority and Trump can’t dismiss them.)
If, however, Trump is convicted in federal court before he takes office—which isn’t totally out of the question, timing-wise—then we would be in uncharted territory. Nothing in the Constitution says a convicted felon can’t be president. Trump would certainly attempt to pardon himself. But according to many constitutional scholars (including me, writing years ago), he can’t. The Supreme Court would then have to decide whether the self-pardon was effective.
If Trump were convicted but got minimal or zero prison time, his presidency could proceed as normal—or as normal as such a thing possibly could be. The judiciary is not going to want to block the choice of the American people to make a convicted Donald Trump their president, so you could imagine the courts going for a minimal sentence.
If Trump were imprisoned, we would face the unprecedented question of whether and how a president could do his job from within a federal penitentiary. One possibility, which admittedly sounds like the premise for a bad Hollywood comedy, is that a court would agree to put Trump under house arrest—in the White House. That wouldn’t be very much punishment for most people.
Failing that sort of a compromise, a convicted, sentenced Trump would have to serve as president from inside prison. We have no idea how that would work. The Constitution is silent on the imprisonment of a president.
There are some technical issues here, to be sure. The 25th Amendment requires the existence of a cabinet. If Trump were to be imprisoned after his election but before his new cabinet could be confirmed, things could get messy.
If the 25th were invoked by the remaining members of Biden’s cabinet, Trump would certainly fire them. That could lead to a failure of the amendment, because it would raise the question of whether Trump’s firing of those cabinet officers was effective given his nominal “incapacity.”
All these scenarios sound far-fetched, I know. But so is the situation we now found ourselves in. From here on out, it’s all new ground.