Can You Run for President From Prison? Yes, It’s Been Done Twice

• The Constitution doesn’t stop candidates from running for president while serving jail time.
• Two previous candidates, Eugene V. Debs in 1920, and Lyndon LaRouche in 1992, both ran from prison.
• If Trump is convicted, it’s possible he could run for president from behind bars.

Former President Donald Trump is facing yet another criminal indictment, this time related to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot and his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. It’s Trump’s third indictment in less than five months — an unprecedented legal obstacle for the GOP frontrunner in the 2024 presidential race.

Trump has vowed to fight the charges and accused prosecutors of a “witch hunt,” but if he’s convicted and sentenced, could he continue his presidential run from prison?

Legal experts told Insider there’s nothing in the Constitution preventing him from doing just that.

Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill, said: “If he happens to be in prison at the time of the next presidential election, the fact that he’s in prison will not prevent him from running.”

Running for president from jail isn’t exactly unprecedented — it’s been done twice before.

Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran from behind bars over 100 years ago

In 1920, Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran for the Oval Office from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he was known as “prisoner 9653,” according to Smithsonian Magazine. Debs was a so-called “radical” at the time, decrying capitalism and the World War I draft. The latter got him locked up, but Debs earned plenty of supporters during his imprisonment. He had also run for president on the Social Party ticket five prior times, often campaigning what historians attributed as more a symbolic race. 

On election night in 1920, Debs didn’t make a speech, and instead, he wrote a statement, the Washington Post reported.

“I thank the capitalist masters for putting me here,” he wrote, according to The Post. “They know where I belong under their criminal and corrupting system. It is the only compliment they could pay me.” 

Debs ended up earning about 3.5{1652eb1ffa4184925f6a63a9c04ea6b421acb7a78117241e7d4325cdca8339fa} of the national vote for president, Smithsonian Magazine reported. 

Fringe candidate Lyndon LaRouche tried for the Democratic Party nomination and then switched tickets

Over 70 years later, another convicted candidate ran for the president from jail: political fringe and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche.

LaRouche was no stranger to campaigning — he ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 — but his 1992 campaign from federal prison garnered particular attention.

USA Today reported in 2019 that in the lead-up to the 1992 election, LaRouche was behind bars serving a 15-year sentence for committing mail fraud and campaign fraud conspiracy, the latter involving $30 million in loans from supporters that prosecutors said LaRouche had never attempted to repay. But that didn’t stop him from seeking out the Democratic Party nomination.

When Bill Clinton won the primary, LaRouche switched to the National Economic Recovery ticket, campaigning on overhauling the world’s financial and baking systems. He ultimately received over 26,000 votes in the election, about 0.02{1652eb1ffa4184925f6a63a9c04ea6b421acb7a78117241e7d4325cdca8339fa} of the popular vote. 

Beyond his economic viewpoints, LaRouche’s other beliefs often played into conspiracy theories and apocalyptic visions about the world, Reuters reported in 2019. He had a variety of confounding views of the AIDS crisis —including that it was first spread by the International Monetary Fund — and believed the Holocaust was “mythical,” Reuters and USA Today reported.

What would it look like for Trump to campaign from prison?

While Debs and LaRouche were both unsuccessful in their campaigns, they were still able to run for president while behind bars. Their supporters, running mates, and parties spread the word, bolstering their messages when they couldn’t.

And support for Trump, who announced his 2024 campaign late last year, is still surging. Recent polling puts him well ahead of his GOP rivals, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

But how Trump navigates his bolstering legal challenges could determine how successful his campaign is. 

Earlier this year, Trump was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Months of witness testimonies to a New York grand jury, including some by Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen, spoke to the decade-long timeline between Trump, Daniels, and the $130,000 payment he said was made ahead of the 2016 election. 

And in the past few months, Trump was hit with an initial and superseding indictment in Miami related to his handling of classified documents. In June, the Justice Department’s special counsel Jack Smith brought 37 counts against him, and according to the indictment, accused Trump of violating the Espionage Act 31 times by illegally holding onto sensitive national security documents, conspiring to obstruct justice, lying to law enforcement, and violating three different statutes related to withholding and concealing government records. 

Then, just last week, a superseding indictment added two additional charges against Trump. 

In all of these cases, the timeline for a trial isn’t entirely clear, and it’s possible they could occur after the 2024 election. 

But if convicted, Trump “would be subject to the same rules as other prisoners, which could restrict their communications and ability to appear at events,” Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former US attorney, previously told Insider. “He would need to rely on proxies to campaign for him.” 

But he could still run. And, if he wins the nomination and the presidency in 2024, Trump may well test a presidential power that’s never been needed before: a self-pardon.