This is a factual question. If Hillary Clinton is arrested by the FBI and charged with a federal crime such as Espionage, as some news outlets have been reporting for months, what effect would this have on a candidate both
a) before they win the nomination or
b) after they win the nomination
Are there any laws relating to this? Would Hillary be allowed to run? If she was, and she got elected, but then was found guilty, what would happen?
Same answer as the previous times somebody “just asked that question”.
I don’t have time to go waltzing all over the internet finding obscurely phrased threads.
Convicted criminals can run for office and be elected to it.
I suppose that then either Obama could pardon her, or she could just pardon herself.
Pardoning yourself if you’re President. What an interesting thought. Why didn’t Nixon think of that ?
Impeachment is unrelated to the pardoning process; a self-pardon wouldn’t have kept him in the presidency. And he picked Ford as his VP, who eventually did pardon him.
Convicted yes, but I asked specifically about incarcerated (for espionage nonetheless)
Surely there is something written somewhere that forbids a president from holding office while in prison on charges that are this close to treason?
I don’t mean she could be charged with treason, I mean espionage is pretty close to it.
Nope.
Are you just talking about being arrested? Legally, that would have no effect - she would be considered innocent until proven guilty. She could be nominated, run for President, and be elected.
Congress could impeach her after the inauguration, for anything they wanted to. If the Senate convicted her, she would be removed from office, but no further penalty would ensue from the impeachment or removal - Congress can impose no other penalty besides removing her from office. I supposed they could also vote to censure, but that has no legal effect.
She could, in theory, pardon herself, although that is a more thorny issue, but this would not stop the House of Representatives from impeaching or the Senate removing her if they chose.
Regards,
Shodan
Here, try these:
I searched for threads with “Hillary” in the title over the last 6 months. Not too hard. FYI there aren’t any on this topic with “Clinton” in the title; I searched for that too.
For a very generous definition of “news”.
Here’s the transcript from the Senate Judicial Committee’s Sept 9th, 1998 session where they took up something very close to this issue.
Closest to a factual answer in this is that … no … a sitting president has to be impeached, removed from office and then criminally prosecuted. We may to wait until this actually happens before we could know any more.
As far as any presidential candidate is concerned, We the People would decide long before the courts could reach a decision. Oh, btw, Lyndon LaRouche ran for president from jail in 1992 …
Given that we have a thread on this subject on this board active only a few weeks ago old that would have been extremely easy to find with even a minimal search, I’m going to close this. If you have further specific questions after reading the other threads that have been linked to, you may open a new thread, but please cite the previous threads.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator