How can Trump still run for president as he heads to trial with four criminal indictments?

Donald Trump is the subject of four criminal indictments at a time when he is hot on the trail of another stint in the White House, having all but officially secured the Republican presidential nomination with ease despite the myriad legal problems he faces.

The 45th president stormed well ahead of his nearest rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis in every poll during the primary season from the first contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, delivering him victories across the board. This set him on course for a rematch with Joe Biden as he sets his sights on becoming the first candidate to regain the White House since Grover Cleveland more than a century ago.

All of this comes against a backdrop of legal chaos, with the Republican indicted for falsifying his business records in New York, withholding classified government documents in Florida, and attempting to overturn the 2020 election in two separate cases in Washington DC and Fulton County, Georgia.

The former commander-in-chief — already the first to be impeached twice in American history during the rolling mayhem of his single-term presidency of 2017 to 2021 — is also battling other civil lawsuits relating to his business practices and personal history and has denied all possible charges against him. He is arguing that, in any case, a president should be granted absolute immunity from prosecution to enable them to go about their duties and make difficult decisions in the Oval Office without fear of subsequent legal reprisals.

As if that were not enough, his hard-pressed legal team also successfully contested in the Supreme Court the decision by the states of Colorado and Maine to remove him from their ballot papers in apparent agreement with Section 3 of the 14th