Trump charges are a first in the U.S. How have trials for world leaders played out elsewhere?
Former U.S. president pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records
It's not often that a president is formally charged, but neither is it unheard of, especially if you look outside the United States.
Political scientist Jay Krehbiel says "heads of state or heads of government have been tried for a number of things, most often for corruption" around the world.
On Tuesday, former U.S. president Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, as prosecutors accused him of paying two women to suppress their accounts of sexual encounters with him.
Trump, who's currently the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, is the first sitting or former U.S. president to face criminal charges.
WATCH: How do Trump voters feel about his indictment?
Krehbiel, an associate professor of political science at Western Virginia University, has studied judicial politics and public opinion, with a particular eye on Western judiciaries.
He spoke to The Current's Matt Galloway about how Trump's indictment compares to others on the world stage — and what impact this might have on American democracy. Here's part of their conversation.
This is a big story when you take a look at what's happening in the United States, but … perhaps not unusual around the world. Tell me more about how this has played out elsewhere.
We've seen this … in a number of well-established democracies, whether that's in France, where multiple presidents, including in continuing cases with Nicolas Sarkozy; the [former] prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, which some of those cases which stand back nearly 12 years had just now been resolved.
Or ongoing in Israel, which perhaps is a useful analogy, in some respects, to the ongoing case in the United States; where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was charged with corruption, and then that case slowly proceeded and he was then out of office while the case proceeded and now is back in office.
[It] perhaps lends some interesting potential lessons for this country as the campaign continues with this indictment and charge sort of ongoing.
How often is it that those former leaders who would be charged are actually convicted in those cases?
It's a kind of hit-and-miss. You'll see almost all the time they will appeal.
For example, in the case of Brazil with the now President [Inácio Lula da Silva], he had been convicted in the big corruption scandal in that country, but then that was thrown out for political bias, as it turned out, with the initial judge, and his conviction was vacated.
In other instances, we've seen the initial charges seem more likely to stick, and then it's those appeals that oftentimes sort of allow them to get off the hook, as it were. Some of that's still yet to be seen, in the case of France, Nicolas Sarkozy's case is under appeal as it currently stands.
I think that's perhaps also noteworthy that it often comes to that stage, because prosecutors generally do not want to bring a case against someone as high profile as a president or prime minister unless they really feel like they have a strong case. If you're going to go after someone of that high profile, you want to make sure that you've got it as close to correct as you can.
I don't know if you can disentangle this story from the personalities at the heart of it, but what are the differences … between Donald Trump's case and the cases from the other parts of the world?
You're right that the personalities certainly play an outsized role in many respects, but there's a couple aspects worth noting.
One is in the United States, district attorneys … are local prosecutors who are generally, in most states elected — and they're elected with a partisan label to them, which is different than effectively most of the rest of the world.
So when the president or his allies talk about this as a Democrat witch hunt or something like that, they're pointing to the fact that the district attorney was, in fact, elected as a Democrat.
To say it's happened elsewhere is not to trivialize the significance of it.-Jay Krehbiel, political scientist
Now, that doesn't mean that he's politically biased in how he carries out his job, but it makes it much easier for politicians to use that label against them, to say this is a Democrat in the office of district attorney bringing the case against me.
Whereas in most of the world the prosecutorial roles are more housed either in, say, a justice ministry or a more insulated an independent, if you will, non-partisan edifice. That can help to insulate, at least to a better degree than I think what we're seeing here.
They will use all of these opportunities available to them to try and try and make it appear political.
WATCH: What does Trump's indictment mean for his political future?
What is the impact of something like this on U.S. democracy? Is it a test of U.S. democracy?
There's no doubt it's a test — and I think it's worth noting in all of those other countries where former presidents or prime ministers have been tried, it's also been a test there.
To say it's happened elsewhere is not to trivialize the significance of it. It certainly puts a lot of pressure on the system and on the people within the country, in this case on Americans, to have continued faith in our justice system, to allow that process to play out.
If people aren't willing to do so or if politicians are going to use it for their own personal political benefit and whatever the consequences to our democracy may be, then that's much more concerning.
Does it worry you personally? … It feels like the country is deeply, deeply divided.
It's worrisome in the sense that this is sort of like, "Here we go again." This kind of ... calling into question something that I don't think most Americans really were that concerned about.
I think, generally, people's confidence in the fundamental functioning of our legal system was there. There's been some cracks to that with, for example, the Supreme Court and public confidence in that institution wavering to some extent — and this just feels like it's another sort of chip, and a chipping away at some of the ... norms of our democracy and institutions.
But that said, I'm still optimistic that the democracy here is resilient, that most Americans can see that.
There are those that are on the edges that are, of course, going to think differently. But I think the majority of people are still with democracy.
Produced by Howard Goldenthal, Brianna Gosse and Cathy Simon. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
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