Keller @ Large: Could Trump end up campaigning from behind bars?
BOSTON - Former President Donald Trump is now facing more than 70 felony charges, and some carry prison sentences of up to 20 years.
Could Trump end up campaigning from behind bars? It's happened before.
Socialist Eugene V. Debs did it in 1920, touting his prison uniform number in campaign material. Seventy-two years later, fringe candidate Lyndon LaRouche also ran from his prison cell. And Boston political legend James Michael Curley won re-election to his state representative's seat while serving time for fraud.
But Trump would be the first major-party figure to run from the lockup, raising all sorts of logistical questions. "As a former president he's entitled to 24-hour Secret Service protection, and I just have no idea how that would work in a prison setting," says Boston College Law Professor Robert Bloom.
But does it have to get to that point?
Back in the 1970s Vice President Spiro Agnew avoided jail time for taking bribes by resigning in a plea deal to lesser charges. Could that be a way out for Trump? "He seems to have very poor legal advice, that seems to be a motif," says Suffolk University Law Professor Rosanna Cavallaro. "A good lawyer would be saying to him 'you need to be thinking about how we're going to resolve this short of a trial.'"
And should he win a second term, there's another option. "I believe the pardon legislation is such that he's got a lot of freedom to do that," says Prof. Bloom.
But Trump wouldn't be the only imprisoned candidate should that happen.
Convicted killer-for hire and animal abuser Joe Exotic is also running for president, for the second time.
No federal candidate has ever won election from prison, and our two legal experts differed on whether or not a Trump conviction could even occur before election day, what with delays and appeals.
Either way, one thing is certain - we are heading into uncharted waters, and whatever the outcome, millions of Americans will come away from it suspecting the worst about our legal system.
