Will Trump evade justice thanks to his 2024 White House run?

The law is clear. The politics less so. If Donald Trump's third run for the White House is propelled by large doses of narcissism and revenge, the former US president must also be hoping that a high-profile political campaign may help keep his myriad legal problems at bay before they bury him.

- Chris McGreal

Prosecutors have spent months digging into an array of alleged crimes before, during and after Trump was president. Some of those investigations are coming to fruition with indictments expected to follow on charges that potentially could see Trump become the first former US president to go to prison.

His declaration that he is once again a candidate changes nothing under the law. Legal minds broadly agree that while a sitting president is protected from prosecution in office, that immunity disappears when they leave the White House. But then there is the politics of a prosecution against a presidential candidate who has dismissed the investigations of his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the hoarding of top secret documents and allegedly fraudulent business practices, as "politically motivated" and a Democratic "witch-hunt".

Donald Ayer, a former US deputy attorney general under President George HW Bush, said the political element will weigh on prosecutors only to the extent that it affects their ability to persuade a jury to convict him.

"It does not change the extent of his culpability or the urgency of holding the worst perpetrators of these crimes accountable."