Former President Donald Trump was indicted on Tuesday in a federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The announcement Tuesday marks the third time this year that prosecutors have brought charges against the former president — Trump was indicted last month on more than three dozen felony charges related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents, and separately faced 34 felony charges brought by the Manhattan district attorney related to alleged hush money payments to an adult film star ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

And more charges could be coming against the former president: A prosecutor in Georgia’s most populous county is expected to bring charges in the coming weeks in a criminal probe about attempts to overturn the state’s election results in 2020.

Trump, who is running for president for a third time, has denied any wrongdoing in the New York and classified documents cases — he has not yet entered a plea in the election interference case — and has branded each of those prosecutorial efforts as a partisan “witch hunt.”

The country has never faced a situation quite like this — particularly with Trump seeking yet another White House bid – and it raises several novel Constitutional and legal questions.

“This is a terrible stress test for American democracy and the rule of law,” said Paul Schiff Berman, a constitutional law expert at The George Washington University Law School.

We spoke to experts to try and get some answers.

Can an impartial jury be assembled?

Former President Trump is, by all accounts, a divisive and polarizing figure. He’s beloved by his supporters and reviled by his opposition.

So it bears the question: Is it possible to assemble an impartial jury in this case?

Trump’s attorneys don’t think so. They’ve argued in at least one case that Trump cannot get a fair trial while on the campaign trail.

“Proceeding to trial during the pendency of a Presidential election cycle wherein opposing candidates are effectively (if not literally) directly adverse to one another in this action will create extraordinary challenges in the jury selection process and limit the Defendants’ ability to secure a fair and impartial adjudication,” his attorneys wrote in a filing in an effort to delay the classified documents trial until after the election (it was ultimately set for May 2024, a compromise – the Justice Department asked for the trial to begin in December of this year).

David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor, disagrees with the former president’s assessment.

“It's going to be difficult to get a jury in place, but the fact that he's running for office shouldn't automatically be a reason to just continue this beyond the November election,” Weinstein told Spectrum News.

Berman said he believes normal jury selection procedures should be enough to ensure fairness.

“You don't want people who simply hate Trump and want to see him in jail,” Berman said. “And you also don't want to see die-hard Trump supporters who won't convict him no matter what the evidence is. You need to have people who will judge the evidence fairly.”

If Trump is convicted, can he still run for president?

The short answer is yes. There is nothing specifically in the Constitution that prevents someone who is convicted from running for president.

In fact, if convicted, Trump wouldn’t be the first person to run from behind bars: Eugene V. Debs ran for president five times as the candidate for the Socialist Party of America. In the election of 1920, Debs won 3.4% of the vote – roughly 1 million votes – in his fifth and final run for president, the largest number of popular votes ever received by a socialist candidate, and he did it from behind bars.

Aziz Huq, a constitutional law expert at the University of Chicago Law School, said the framers of the Constitution likely never considered such a scenario.

“I think that the framers of our Constitution did not imagine that someone who was convicted of a serious offense could be elevated to the role of the presidency,” Huq told Spectrum News. “I think that they would have been gravely disappointed by that prospect to say the least.”

“Even if former President Trump was convicted in the Jan. 6-related case … that doesn't automatically mean that he is disqualified under the 14th Amendment,” Huq said.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment reads: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

But, as Huq notes: “There isn't anything in the 14th Amendment that says ‘this is how disqualification works,’ leaving room for what he calls an “important legal ambiguity” about how that process goes into effect.

Section 3 has only been invoked once: to block Victor L. Berger, the founder of the Social Democratic Party of America, from taking his seat in the House of Representatives. Berger was convicted of violating the Espionage Act for expressing anti-interventionist views during World War I, but the Supreme Court overturned the verdict in 1921.

Can Trump pardon himself?

This is probably the trickiest question in the bunch. In fact, every expert Spectrum News spoke to said roughly the same thing:

“There is not a clear-cut answer,” Berman said.

“There's no law on this question,” said Huq.

Weinstein added that there’s “no cut-and-dry answer” on a self-pardon.

So, it’s relatively unclear and largely untested. According to multiple reports, Trump asked aides about the possibility of a self-pardon in the final days of his presidency — after the 2020 presidential election and ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of his supporters stormed the building as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden’s victory.

Berman said that “most constitutional scholars believe that probably the answer is no, you can't pardon yourself, because pardoning is meant to be an act of grace bestowed on someone else,” but added that there’s “nothing in the Constitution” that specifically addresses a self-pardon.

“I'm sure the framers did not anticipate the idea that the president would have been convicted of a criminal charge,” Berman said, adding that the situation would put the country into “uncharted waters” if it happens.

Huq stated that while there’s no precedent for such a move, a “powerful argument” can be made that because “a self-pardon presents the extraordinary spectacle of somebody using governmental powers in ways that benefit themselves directly,” one could make the case that it could be an abuse of the power.

“However, I don't see any meaningful mechanism whereby limits on the pardon power could be imposed,” Huq said, adding that if Trump pardons himself, “I don't think that there is any practical way for someone who thinks that the pardon was unconstitutional, for raising that concern, either in a court or some other forum.”

No president has ever pardoned themselves, and only one ex-president ever received such clemency: Richard Nixon, who was pardoned after his resignation by his former vice president and successor, Gerald Ford.  

Weinstein said that “we came close to seeing” such a situation happen with Nixon, who stepped down amid an impeachment investigation into his own alleged abuses of power amid the Watergate scandal. In that case, Nixon administration officials attempted to cover up schemes to ensure his re-election.

“We never did see how that played out,” he said. “There are arguments to be made on both sides by constitutional scholars and don't have a definitive answer yet.” 

“Certainly it’s something if that, in fact, happens and [Trump] finds himself the president again, he's certainly going to try it,” Weinstein added.