As Donald Trump faces mounting allegations of impropriety, experts say even a prison sentence wouldn't necessarily stop him becoming US president for a second time.
The former president faces potential legal charges relating to the 2020 election, the January 6 insurrection, and a selection of classified documents he refused to give up after leaving office, which have recently become the subject of a high-profile FBI investigation.
But even if he were to be charged and convicted, experts said he wouldn't automatically be barred from holding the highest office in the land.
"There's no prohibition in the Constitution for a convicted felon, even potentially one sitting in jail, from being president," said former FBI counterintelligence agent and federal prosecutor Asha Rangappa.
Ms Rangappa, who is an assistant dean at Yale Law School, told the ABC News Daily podcast the requirements for becoming US president are minimal.
"You have to be 35 years old, you have to have been a natural-born citizen and lived in the United States for 14 years," she said.
"Even if he's indicted and even if he's convicted, that actually doesn't stop him from running for president again.
"So, you know, I think that it is a very real possibility."
Mr Trump is yet to officially announce his candidacy for the 2024 US presidential election, but he's widely expected to do so in the coming weeks.
It's brought into even tighter focus a recent FBI investigation into whether he may have broken the law by retaining thousands of documents — some very highly classified — for months after he left office.
The 'legally crazy' ruling which helps Trump's case
Mr Trump won a small victory last week when a judge granted his request for a third party to review the 11,000 documents seized in an FBI raid of his Florida home.
The highly contentious decision by US District Judge Aileen Cannon requires an outside legal expert – known as a special master – to remove any documents seized in the raid which may fall under attorney-client or executive privilege.
The Department of Justice has this week agreed that one of the potential special masters proposed by Mr Trump's team — senior Judge Raymond Dearie — would be acceptable.
Mr Dearie has served as a federal judge in New York since the 1980s after being appointed by Ronald Reagan.
Whether he ultimately is selected to be the special master is still yet to be determined by Judge Cannon.
In the meantime, the Department of Justice is also appealing the decision to appoint a special master, saying it would cause "irreparable harm" to efforts by the intelligence community to protect national security interests.
Ms Rangappa believes the ruling to appoint a special master is so unprecedented she described it as "legally crazy".
"At first it was so bizarre that there was some thought that this judge was going to throw this out," she said.
"She not only didn't throw it out, she entertained it and then she really gave Trump everything he wanted."
Another former federal prosecutor, Sarah Krissoff, agreed the ruling granting a special master was unprecedented.
"There's a lot of legal scholars out there that really question the legal basis for the ruling," said Ms Krissoff, now a partner at law firm Day Pitney.
"The part that is frankly so extraordinary about halting the use of those documents, is that the Department of Justice has made it very clear that the review of those documents has already been done."
The FBI has a filtering process to review documents for privilege before criminal investigators or prosecutors see them, so having a third party examine the documents is unusual.
But Ms Rangappa believes the more surprising aspect of the ruling is requiring the special master to look for documents protected by executive privilege.
"Executive privilege is a constitutional principle that shields executive branch information from other branches of the government," she said.
"But Trump isn't president anymore, he's just a random person like you and me."
She said Mr Trump's strategy in requesting the special master was simply to delay the investigation.
"At the very least, this does that, and at best, it may derail this whole investigation," she said.
What charges could Trump face?
While it's not clear exactly what charges Mr Trump may face relating to the documents, Ms Krissoff said the Department of Justice had many options if it did wish to pursue him in the courts.
"The federal criminal code is vast, there are many criminal statutes frankly that are not used very frequently, but can be utilised creatively," she said.
"So I think that the Justice Department has a lot of, you know, arrows in their quiver, so to speak."
One of the most problematic charges Mr Trump and his lawyers could face is obstruction of justice.
Prior to the FBI's August 8 raid of his Mar-a-Lago home, Mr Trump had already been subpoenaed by the Department of Justice to return any documents he had that should have been returned to the US National Archives.
His lawyers signed a sworn statement that all classified documents he possessed had been returned.
But the fact that the FBI search went on to find boxes of top secret documents — including some at the highest levels of secure classification – has led Ms Rangappa to believe Mr Trump and his lawyers could be in trouble.
"The fact that the search recovered so many classified documents really is instrumental in showing that Trump was trying to obstruct justice," she said.
"He understood that the Department of Justice was trying to recover these documents and he purposely concealed many of them in his office."
Prosecutors have a particular interest in documents that reportedly relate to the nuclear capabilities and defences of another unspecified country.
Possessing documents like this, Ms Rangappa said, could open Mr Trump up to being charged under the Espionage Act.
"The Espionage Act has several different prohibitions, but amongst them is illegally possessing national defence information, which the person who owns it has reason to believe could injure the United States if it is disclosed or could benefit a foreign government," she said.
"That can impact, for example, partnerships with other countries who share intelligence with us, or if it's from our own sources and methods, it could severely compromise many of our most sensitive sources and methods that we have in our own intelligence capabilities."
While attention has been focused on the classified documents Trump had stored at Mar-a-Lago, Ms Rangappa said even the non-classified documents could pose a legal problem for him.
"He had more than 10,000 government records generally in his possession, which is itself illegal because those records belong to the United States government and should be in the possession of the National Archives under US law," she said.
That has become even more problematic for Mr Trump because after he ceased being president, he also lost his security classification.
"He doesn't automatically get one because he's a former president," Ms Rangappa said.
"In fact, he lost it the day that he left office and so he's just like you or me possessing these documents in our home."
Some charges could prevent Trump becoming president
While the obstruction of justice charge may be the most difficult for Mr Trump to defend, there's another potential charge he may be more worried about — the illegal removal, concealment and mutilation of government documents.
This is one of two charges Ms Rangappa said has the potential to prevent Mr Trump running in the 2024 presidential race.
"Interestingly, that statute has as one of its penalties a prohibition from holding public office," she said.
"We know from one of the Department of Justice's filings that at least some of these government records were torn, for example, but they were definitely illegally removed from the White House and taken to Mar-a-Lago."
The other crime she believed Mr Trump could be charged with that would prevent him becoming president is that of insurrection and rebellion in relation to the January 6 attack on the Capitol building.
This week, the Department of Justice issued another 40 subpoenas and seized the phones of two of Mr Trump's top advisers as part of its investigations.
But Ms Rangappa said insurrection will be a much harder crime to prove.
"The Department of Justice — if they chose to charge him with that — would have to really make the causal link between Trump's speech or his actions leading up to January 6, his speech and the attack on the Capitol," she said.
"But I think there's a pretty strong case, based on what we've seen the January 6 committee put together."
How soon could Trump face criminal charges?
Ever since the FBI searched his home on August 8, Mr Trump has maintained he has done nothing wrong, calling the investigation into the Mar-a-Lago documents a "witch-hunt".
His lawyer James Trusty compared the former president keeping classified documents to hanging on to an "overdue library book".
But legal experts claim the fact that the FBI was able to obtain a search warrant to retrieve the documents means that they were able to convince a judge there was probable cause that a crime had been committed.
"I suspect they had secured key witnesses already," said former federal prosecutor Ms Krissoff, who believes the high profile nature of the search means the Department of Justice would have been especially cautious.
"I suspect they had already obtained key documents … or data from third parties that they had requested."
"I would expect that the Justice Department was pretty far along in its investigation before it executed the search because they knew at the moment they executed the search of Mar-a-Lago their investigation would be under intense scrutiny by everybody in the world."
But even if Mr Trump is charged or convicted, Ms Krissoff doubts it will diminish his popularity.
"The view of the Trump supporters, from what I've seen … is that these investigations are unfounded and politicised and have no real merit," she said.
"Frankly, even if the investigations result in charges or civil penalties, they still may not be persuaded."
Ms Rangappa agreed that while many people in the US may have been convinced by the Mar-a-Lago investigation that Mr Trump has done something wrong, that doesn't necessarily reduce his chances in the 2024 election.
"I think there's absolutely a possibility he could be elected president again," she said.
"He still has a lot of very fervent supporters."
