Title says it all.
Would an ex-president have Secret Service agents protecting him/her if the ex-president goes to prison?
If an ex-president goes to prison (for whatever reason) does he still get Secret Service protection?
If an ex-president was removed from office he/she would not qualify for the Former Presidents Act which in it’s last revision would have provided lifetime Secret Service protection. So not always, but the act doesn’t make any other exclusions I know of.
Asking for a friend. Need answer by November-ish.
The statute doesn’t say anything about when protection of a former president might terminate. So he would presumably still get the guard detail.
I’d WAG that a former president would have to be housed in a private unit. The agents would occupy posts normally reserved for prison staff at checkpoints and guard posts.
That would be my guess (for what that’s worth). Sort of like how Rudolf Hess was the only guy in Spandau Prison for 20 years.
Richard Nixon, as we all know, resigned in 1974, but was given Secret Service protection until 1985, when he voluntarily gave the protection up and paid for his own.
You guys have just spoiled the plot for the next Fallen movie where ex-President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) is wrongfully convicted of murdering his successor and sent to Rikers prison as the murder occurred in NY. Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is assigned to protect him while he is serving out his sentence.
Nixon never went to prison.
Since then new laws have been passed and ex-presidents get lifetime protection.
Trump would likely get house arrest, not real prison. The political reality would be that it wouldn’t look good to have him locked away in martyrdom. Let him serve out his final days at the caddy shack of one of his resorts while democrats and minorities play golf one of the numerous new public courses he signs over as restitution for his crimes.
We’ve talked about this before. I think the GQ answer is we don’t know and we can’t know.
The law is that he would get protection, but it’s really all uncharted territory. No one envisioned a president with multiple prosecutions just waiting for him to step out of office to charge him without him being so disgraced that he was impeached and removed from office, so the ‘removed from office’ is the only disqualifier from the act as written. There’s also no specific constitutional provisions or history of a former president serving a prison sentence, so there’s really no historical precedent to fall back on.
If there’s a Democratic Congress and presidency next year, I expect that the Former Presidents Act will be amended to specifically address the possibility of the president leaving the office normally but later getting a prison sentence. Since it’s just ordinary legislation, there’s no problem with altering it for presidents who’s term started or ended before the legislation was passed.
And he could still be impeached and removed from office before his term is up.
I had not thought about the fact that congress can convene a few weeks before the President’s term switches over, I always thought of them happening at the same time.
Even if the Senate flips, seems unlikely that 67 Senators vote for conviction.
It is unlikely, but if Trump loses bad, the House and Senate get Democratic majorities, and the people turn against the Republicans then there may be enough senators looking for a way to survive. If we were talking about needing 1 or 2 of them to join in it might be doable but it will likely need 10 or more of them so it’s just a pipe dream.
He’d probably get secret shower protection.
I thought that was made for a woman?
One thing we know is that he’ll probably end up in a country club “prison,” with rooms (and showers) made of gold.
Yeah, in a bedbug-infested room.
Perhaps Trump will leave the country and live comfortably in exile somewhere. There are precedents: Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier and Idi Amin.
If they’re in a position to impeach in January, doesn’t that mean they’ve won their elections? Survival shouldn’t be that much of a concern, especially for the Senate, since that class that just faced election won’t do so again for the political eternity of six years from now.
I suppose if the lame-duck session of losing Senators decided to hastily burn Trump on their way out as a “fuck you” gesture…
But in any case, and despite how scrambled and disordered we can reasonably expect Trump’s brain to be based on the simple evidence of listening to him for more than thirty seconds, it’s conceivable he might blurt out classified information in prison, hence it being in the nation’s best interest to keep him isolated. House arrest is more feasible.