Donald Trump announced that he will run for president in 2024.
Does becoming a Presidential Candidate Confer any immunity from litigation?
Donald Trump announced that he will run for president in 2024.
Does becoming a Presidential Candidate Confer any immunity from litigation?
A Presidential candidate has no legal immunity for litigation or prosecution different from that of any other political candidate.
The First Amendment provides significant protections for expressive conduct of a candidate for political office.
Presidential candidates do have a few special privileges, most notably, secret service protection and at a late stage, access to certain intelligence briefings not available to the general public.
Judges and prosecutors often seek to avoid the appearance of impropriety interfering with a Presidential election campaign and this may influence, for example, the scheduling of proceeding against a candidate. But there is no actual immunity from either criminal or civil liability for a Presidential candidate that is different from anyone else.
The Department of Justice and various prosecutors usually refrain from actions that would give the appearance of interfering with the electoral process. Part of that is the unofficial 60-day rule, which protects significant political figures from some action in the days before an election.
Having declared himself a candidate, ex-President Trump will probably claim that any and all actions against him are politicially motivated. This might slow some legal actions, as the DOJ makes sure that only "bulletproof" cases go forward.