On video: Trump announced that he will run for president in 2024: "America's comeback begins" (Reuters)
A sitting president of the United States has never been charged with a crime.
Three presidents have been impeached, but not convicted of a crime: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019 and 2020.
Impeachment is a kind of equivalent of an indictment, but does not require a criminal charge, but rather involves non-criminal misconduct while in the White House.
Impeachment is not determined in the criminal justice system but in Congress when the attitude towards it is political.
Bill Clinton (Photo: Reuters)
The US Constitution does not allow the impeachment of a president.
The problem is that the authority to criminally investigate and convict him is an executive authority.
The constitution grants all executive powers to the president directly, and any authority to investigate or sue emanates from the president - and may be revoked at will.
Also, the judiciary cannot order the president to obey the court, just as the president cannot order the Supreme Court to obey the White House.
Even if a president decides to go to court and allow himself to be convicted - without the pardon that only he can give - he will still remain the president, with all the powers that come with that.
This is because only Congress can impeach him.
Richard Nixon announces his resignation (Photo: GettyImages)
The decades-long policy of the US Department of Justice advocates that a sitting president cannot be impeached.
In 1973, in the midst of the Watergate affair, the Justice Department adopted the approach that a sitting president could not be indicted.
President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974, amid an attempt by the House of Representatives to impeach him.
In a 2000 memorandum, the Justice Department reaffirmed its policy that "a sitting president is effectively constitutionally immune" from criminal prosecution.
According to the memorandum, filing a criminal indictment against a president is a "violation of the constitutional separation of the branches" and may result in the blurring of the boundaries between the executive, legislative and judicial branches.
However, some believe that if the nation's founders had wanted to, they could have included a clause in the constitution protecting the president from prosecution, but they did not.
Therefore, a lawsuit is a legitimate step.
According to these people, presidential immunity is a violation of the basic principle that no one is above the law.
Regarding the question of whether it is possible to sue a former president for certain conduct during his term of office, the answer is yes.
President Gerald Ford, who entered the White House in place of Nixon, knew this when he pardoned Nixon.
However, many federal crimes are statute-barred after five years, meaning that indicting Trump is time-limited.
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