Could FBI Raid Lead To Trump Being BARRED From Holding Office Again?

The raid on Mar-a-Lago by FBI agents this week has raised a very serious question about Trump's political future: Could this result in him being barred from ever holding elected office again? That's not a dumb question, as the penalty for illegal destruction of official government documents does include getting barred from holding office again, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through before we get to that point. Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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Now that some of the dust has settled with regard to the FBI rating, Donald Trump's residence at Malago on Monday, it's time to look at what actually could happen as a result of this. And of course the biggest question mark is what exactly were they looking for? And I guess equally important, which investigation is it for? I know everybody seems to think, you know, based on hunches that this is related, of course, to the national archives, the presidential records act all the 15 boxes of information that he had there. Some of it classified, but keep in mind, we do not have confirmation that that is what this was related to. Now, Trump does Trump has the warrant, so he knows exactly what they were looking for and why they were looking for it. He has not released it. He could, but of course that would make him look so much worse.

So we're left to speculate. So assuming that it is related to the presidential records act, that could mean if Trump ends up being convicted, that he would be barred from ever holding public office. Again, probably. And I'll explain why only, probably just a minute, but let's look at this. This would be prosecuted again, if it's related to the, uh, not preserving documents, maybe flushing them down a toilet. I don't know it is section 2 0 7, 1 of title 18 of the United States code, which makes it illegal. If someone with custody of confidential government records, willfully and unlawfully, conceals removes mutilates obliterates falsies, or destroys them. The code states, the person shall quote, be fined under this title or imprisoned, not more than three years or both, and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States, which would seem to include being the president of the United States.

So if convicted of this, it would effectively bar him from holding public law office here in the United States ever again, maybe because there is another thing in the United States constitution that kind of says, uh, we've already laid out the criteria for who can be president of the United States and that clause and the constitution that, that, you know, lays out the criteria for being president in the United States. It does not include having been convicted of violating section 2 0 7 1 title 18, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't say that they can't be. So we do have two kind of conflicting laws. The constitution says, if you meet these criteria, you may run for

President section 2 0 7. One says, yeah, but if you do this, you can't be president. Which means, again, we're, we're getting into a lot of what ifs here, but we've gotta go down. 'em cuz this is, you know, the biggest news of the week right now. If Trump we're prosecuted under section 2 0 7 1 and only under section 2 0 7 1 or at least section 2 0 7 1 Annie's convicted. Then regardless of what the punishment is, it carries that caveat that you either have to forfeit your office or you can't run for office ever again, both. So it doesn't matter if the judge said, yes, you are now convicted. I sentence you to, you know, 10 seconds in jail. That wouldn't matter. It would still come with the, you can't ever run for office again here in the United States. Unless of course they want to issue a constitutional challenge to it. Claiming as I pointed out that, Hey constitution says, you gotta meet these criteria.

He meets 'em. He can run. So then we would be set in a situation where we would have one law versus the constitution of the United States. That is the court battle that could come from all of this. Of course, if Trump is convicted. And of course, if this raid was even about those documents that he stored at Maralago from the white house, more on, this does need to come out. I'm assuming it obviously will in the future. Again, we're all kind of left to assume that it's about the, the documents, but not a hundred percent positive just yet. So stay tuned because there's apparently a lot more that we're gonna learn hopefully in the coming days or weeks.