Running for his life? Why election day may also be judgment day for Trump

Losing an election for the highest office is a crushing blow that no candidate forgets. But when the American electorate delivers its verdict next week, the personal stakes for Donald Trump will be uniquely high.

- David Smith

As the votes are counted, his fate will hover between the presidency and the threat of prison.

If he claims victory, Trump will be the first convicted criminal to win the White House and gain the nuclear codes. If he falls short, the 78-year-old faces more humiliating courtroom trials and potentially even time behind bars. It would be the end of a charmed life in which he has somehow always managed to outrun the law and duck accountability. For Trump, Tuesday is judgment day.

"If Trump loses, he's in a world of legal hurt," said Jonathan Alter, a presidential biographer who was in court in New York every day for Trump's hush money trial this summer. "I've covered some big stories over the years but there was nothing like the drama of watching the jury foreperson say 'guilty' 34 times and Donald Trump looking like he was punched in the gut."

Not even that verdict was enough to derail Trump's latest and probably last campaign for the White House. The property developer and reality TV star has spent his career pushing ethical and legal boundaries to the limit, facing countless investigations, court battles and hefty fines. Worthy of a novel, it has been a life of scandal on a gargantuan scale.

In the 1970s Trump and his father were sued by the justice department for racial discrimination after allegedly refusing to rent apartments to black people in predominantly white buildings. His property and casino businesses, including the Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza, filed for bankruptcy several times in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Trump University, a business offering property training courses, faced multiple lawsuits for alleged fraud, misleading marketing and false claims about the quality of its programmes. In 2016 Trump settled for $25m (£19m) without admitting wrongdoing.