You can run for president from prison. Here's what happened when 2 candidates campaigned from behind bars.

• 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 due in court Tuesday on an indictment by the Justice Department over his classified documents scandal — and separate criminal charges are still pending a trial in Manhattan.

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% 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% 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 both 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.

On Friday, the Justice Department unsealed a scathing indictment against the former president, detailing allegations that he held onto classified documents, obstructed the government's attempts to get them back, and showed them off to visitors — even keeping some in the Mar-A-Lago bathroom.

The charges represent the most serious legal threat to Trump, experts say. Even his former allies and conservative commentators are saying the evidence in the indictment is "damning."

But that's not the only criminal trial Trump faces. In Manhattan, Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records after a years-long probe into an alleged $130,000 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

But unlike the Department of Justice indictment, Manhattan prosecutors charging documents were light on details, and former prosecutors previously told Insider the case appears to be shaky.

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.

Read the original article on Business Insider