President Trump could potentially have a criminal record and still obtain a security clearance

Donald Trump‘s course to being a convicted felon will place some restrictions on the former president, but some of those won’t matter if he returns to the White House.

As president, Trump was, and could be again, granted access to the most sensitive secrets in the world of intelligence. Normally, being a convicted felon would make it difficult for someone to gain the security clearance needed to sit in on the president’s daily brief.

But there are exceptions for the president of the United States.

If he is sentenced to jail, Trump could lose his right to carry a firearm or to vote, but it won’t halt his ability to campaign, be elected president, or even hinder his access to top secret documents.

For a person seeking a top secret security clearance in the FBI, the process typically takes between six to nine months. Applicants must undergo a background check that includes interviews with neighbors and friends, an inquiry for public records in civil and criminal litigation, and a dive into one’s mental health history.

There are nine factors that the U.S. government evaluates a person for during a security clearance investigation: drug involvement, criminal conduct, financial considerations, use of information technology systems, United States allegiance, foreign influence, alcohol consumption, psychological conditions and personal behavior, and handling protected information.

A history of a criminal record is not automatically a disqualifier for a person applying for a security clearance unless the crime involved alcohol, drugs, firearms, explosives, or sexual conduct, according to Washington, D.C., law firm S.L. England.

However, when a person is elected president, there are no hoops to jump through to gain access to classified information, and even when a president leaves office there is no debriefing conducted on their access to what top secret documents they have.

A normal government employee with a top secret document will have to sign a legal document at the start of their career acknowledging the requirements not to share classified information, not to store it in unauthorized places, and that at the end of their career they do not possess any documents.

However, presidents are not held to that same standard. This is why the charges against Trump in his handling of classified documents are focused on Trump’s failure to comply with a subpoena in May 2022 rather than just the action of Trump taking the classified documents to Mar-a-Lago.

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Trump likely won’t even have to wait until he’s president to begin getting updates on worldwide intelligence. As has been the norm since 1952, presidential candidates are looped in on intelligence briefings once they have secured their party’s nomination.

A U.S. intelligence officer told NBC News the former president’s historic conviction probably won’t change any agencies’ plans to keep Trump in the loop once he is nominated at the Republican National Convention in July, days after he is scheduled to receive his sentence for the 34 guilty convictions in the hush money case.