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It is unprecedented for a former US president to be facing federal criminal charges. It is unthinkable that, as a result, Donald J Trump could spend the rest of his life in prison. And it is ridiculous that, from behind bars, he could still contest the presidential election in 2024 – and have a chance of winning.

Yet everything about Trump’s political career is unprecedented, unthinkable and ridiculous. The only rule of the Donald is that he breaks all rules.

Trump was impeached twice in office. He’s been through countless investigations, yet he has always managed to escape the shackles of the law. This time, however, he has been accused of crimes that prosecutors say struck at the “bedrock” of American democracy: illegally attempting to subvert the 2020 election.

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In the E.Barrett Prettyman Courthouse, in Washington DC, on Thursday, the former president pleaded not guilty to four charges related to the so-called Stop the Steal campaign and the storming of the US Capitol on Jan 6 2021 – including conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy against the right to vote. The most serious charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.

All of which comes on top of a prosecution by the Department of Justice, which has indicted him on 37 counts for allegedly mishandling the classified documents he kept at his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida; charges which could also lead to 10-to-20-year sentences if convicted. For a 76-year-old, that means life. If found guilty, then, Trump’s only path to freedom would probably be to win the presidential election from behind bars and then pardon himself back into the White House.

Again, that sounds utterly implausible. That does not mean it is impossible. And there is nothing in the US Constitution that prevents someone who has been charged or convicted from seeking or taking office.

Of course, a criminal Trump conviction would throw up some immediate practical challenges: given his position and his fame, where on earth could he be safely incarcerated? Every living president is entitled to secret service security; would Trump’s special agents have to join him in jail?

A protestor outside the courthouse in Miami on Tuesday - Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg

Then there are the political implications, which are even more unfathomable. It seems unlikely that Trump would give up just because he’d been found criminally guilty. On the contrary, he and his supporters would only be further radicalised. Already, his campaign messaging ahead of 2024 has been almost apocalyptic in tone. He promises voters he will be “your retribution” against the “Deep State”, by which he means the network of national security and intelligence agencies, politicised judges and nefarious journalists who are trying to bring him, and therefore America, down.

His more hardline supporters were outside the courthouse in Washington yesterday, carrying campaign flags that said “Trump for President ‘24”, “Finish the Wall” and “Trump Won”. Things could turn ugly fast.

Trump’s voters agree with his assessment that he is the victim of a “witch-hunt”. He is already facing criminal charges in New York for falsifying business records and, earlier this year, a Manhattan court found him “civilly liable” for sexual abuse. Yet his presidential campaign never stops and – a curious dynamic – the more his legal problems mount, the more his support rises among Republican voters.

His political opponents, the Democrats, who run the Department of Justice, are quite sanguine about this situation: they believe that while Trump fans may love him no matter what, the majority will always find him and his MAGA movement too toxic to be suffered. His election in 2016, runs the argument, was an aberration: in the 2020 presidential election, as well as the 2018 and 2022 mid-term elections, Trumpism failed.

Gray: 'Trump’s acolytes like to point out that anybody else, facing the legal and media onslaught he has faced, would be a broken man – but not Donald' - Shutterstock

Yet part of Trump’s appeal, especially among evangelicals, has always been his messianic pitch to voters who feel that the system is rigged against them. He’s fond of sharing an online meme that says: “In reality, it’s not me they’re after. It’s you. I’m just in the way.” Trump’s acolytes and campaign talking heads like to point out that anybody else, facing the legal and media onslaught he has faced, would be a broken man – but not Donald.

If he were to go to jail, even if the evidence against him were damning, his supporters would only feel he’s been proven right. In 2016, he famously bragged: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” In 2024, he could campaign to be re-elected as Commander-in-Chief while incarcerated as a grave threat to national security, and his admirers would only admire him more.

But it’s not just die-hard fans who prefer Donald the potential convict to the Department of Justice. The idea of the righteous rebel, the maverick, or the outlaw speaks to something deep in the freedom-loving American psyche – Think of Jesse James, James Dean, or the abolitionist John Brown. Americans tend to be more cynical about high-level criminal allegations than, say, the British, and therefore the stigma of being accused is less strong. “If you’re not indicted, you’re not invited” is a saying among party-going New Yorkers, for instance.

That scepticism stems in part from the fact that, for centuries, the more democratic American justice system has been more politicised than it is in Britain. Nakedly political people stand for and win elections as judges, district attorneys, or other positions of legal authority and the Department of Justice is led by the man in the White House, even if it is still in theory bound by the constitution.

Trump supporters outside the courthouse on Tuesday - Nathan Howard/Bloomberg

This inevitably leads to a widespread sense of bias. Trump’s New York trial, for instance, was directed by a Democrat district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and overseen by the Democrat attorney general, Letitia James, both of whom are long-standing and outspoken critics of the politician they are trying to convict.

An incarcerated Trump would play on America’s in-built suspicion of the legal system. Convinced of his innocence, and regarding himself as Christ-like in his willingness to suffer for mankind, he won’t be embarrassed by any perpetrator “mug shot” – indeed, he’ll use it as a badge of honour. His campaign team will circulate the image in their promotional materials.

We have seen this before, albeit never with a man who occupied the Oval Office. In 1920, Eugene V Debs, a socialist, ran for president from behind bars and won just shy of a million votes, a staggering amount for a man of his radicalism. He’d been cruelly jailed under the 1918 Sedition Act for his opposition to America’s involvement in the First World War.

His backers made a virtue of his renegade status, handing out photographs of him in convict denim as well as campaign lapel pins that said “Prisoner 9653”. “I thank the capitalist masters for putting me here,” said Debs from jail. “They know where I belong under their criminal and corrupting system. It is the only compliment they could pay me.” It’s not impossible to imagine a jail-bird Trump saying something similar, though he would use the word “globalists” instead of “capitalists”.

Unlike Debs, Trump would be a major party nominee. And many Republicans, even Trump fans, might consider voting for a convict a step too far. After a blaze of media attention following his imprisonment, he would struggle to campaign. The legendary rallies would be Trump-less. He would probably ask his children, Eric, Donald Junior and Ivanka to represent him and push his message all over the country. Ivanka, who is widely thought to have political ambitions of her own, may shrink from attaching herself to a “jail break” campaign in 2024. The Trump family bonds would be tested as never before.

Trump's daughters Tiffany and Ivanka - Getty

Depending on the terms of his sentence, Trump may not even have a mobile phone or regular access to the internet.

The 2024 election could therefore turn out to be an even stranger version of 2020, when Joe Biden effectively campaigned locked inside his Delaware basement and won. That was the year of peak Covid panic and the Black Lives Matter riots, when a sense of madness prevailed and American cities were torched for weeks on end. If Trump is jailed, expect American democracy to get even crazier.

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