Unclear if guilt would bar run

Legal experts were split Tuesday on whether a conviction, stemming from the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, would disqualify former President Donald Trump from running again for the White House.

Marc Elias, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, said it would.

Anyone who “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies or destroys” classified presidential records — widely believed to be the potential violation being investigated by the raid — is “disqualified from holding any office,” Elias said.

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss agreed — telling MSNBC that, if Trump were convicted of mishandling presidential records, the law has “real penalties, including the fact that he may never be able to serve in federal office ever again.”

But others, like Josh Blackman, a constitutional-law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, disagreed.

Blackman said that courts, up to the Supreme Court, have found that Congress cannot alter the presidential eligibility criteria set in the Constitution.

Law professor Seth Barrett Tillman also claimed that the only restrictions on serving as president are citizenship, residence and age.

“Although the former president may be at legal risk, depending on the facts, a criminal conviction would not bar him from another run for elected federal office, including the presidency,” Tillman tweeted.

“As a legal matter, Trump would be free to run for the presidency — even while in jail,” he said.

All of this would only apply if Trump were ever convicted of a crime.

Trump has strenuously denied wrongdoing, previously saying that presidential records were turned over “in an ordinary and routine process.”