It’s Actually Common to Indict Leaders of Democracies

When Donald Trump became the first former United States president to face federal criminal charges on June 9, it set the scene for a legal battle that could test the U.S. judicial and political systems. The charges—37 in total—are related to Trump’s storage of highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

On Aug. 1, Trump was indicted on even more serious charges for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He faces four charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States, violate civil rights, and obstruct an official proceeding.

The American public will closely follow his cases to see what they reveal about America’s ability to hold its most powerful citizens to account. Trump claimed the classified documents indictment is a “witch hunt” and a “hoax” by the Biden administration. He called the Jan. 6 indictment an attempt to interfere in the upcoming presidential election.

“They are also going after me as RETRIBUTION for the Republicans in Congress going after them,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, days before the first federal indictment. “The difference is, they have created major crimes, I have created none!”

Many Republicans are similarly questioning the motivation and timing of the indictment releases. Sen. Ted Cruz called it “political persecution,” while former acting U.S. Attorney General Matt Whitaker called it the “stuff of a banana republic.”

But despite claims that prosecuting Trump means a slide into autocracy, the indictment and conviction of former leaders in democratic and semi-democratic countries around the world is, in fact, quite common.

A Foreign Policy analysis found that at least 78 leaders in 53 democratic or semi-democratic countries—the vast majority of which have successfully held democratic elections following the indictments—have been indicted since 2000. Countries and territories with a “partly free” or “free” score on Freedom House’s global freedom ranking, a total of 143, were included in this analysis.

Where leaders have been indicted since 2000

View on desktop to explore more details about each case.

Hover or click on each country for more information on each case.

Note: Freedom House gives a total of 210 countries and territories a score of 0 to 100 based on their political rights and civil liberties scores, which examine freedom of expression, electoral process, government functionality, and more. The combination of these two scores determines a status of free, partly free, or not free. See table for more details.

Note: Vanuatu’s Charlot Salwai was convicted of some charges but cleared of others. This chart excludes convicted leaders who were later cleared.

Some of the richest and most influential nations in the world have not only indicted but convicted former leaders on serious charges. In the past five years alone, South Korea has convicted two of its former presidents on corruption charges: Lee Myung-bak, who served as president from 2008 to 2013, and his successor, Park Geun-hye, who was impeached in 2017. Both have since been pardoned by sitting presidents while serving their approximately two-decade-long sentences.

South Korea suffers from a history of collusion and corruption between politicians and giant firms, known as chaebol. This old way of doing business helped put two other Korean leaders behind bars just before the turn of the century, bringing the tally of Korean leaders convicted to four in the past 30 years.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was similarly found guilty of bribery in 2021 and sentenced to three years in jail. Two of those years were suspended, and the remaining year will be served under house arrest as upheld by a Parisian court this May. And just last year, former President of Bolivia Jeanine Añez—who stepped forward as a proposed interim president in 2019 following the resignation of her predecessor, Evo Morales—was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She was accused of illegally taking over the presidency.

Note: This list includes those who have been acquitted and those whose charges have been dropped.

Trump’s criminal cases are unlikely to fall to the same political pressures that exonerated him in his two prior impeachment trials, but if acquitted, he wouldn’t be the first. Charismatic, recently deceased Italian statesman Silvio Berlusconi had a storied passage through his home country’s volatile judicial system. He was only convicted once in more than 30 court cases and acquitted in 10 for charges ranging from bribery to paying for sex with a minor. Two former Taiwanese presidents, Lee Teng-hui and Ma Ying-jeou, were also acquitted of embezzlement in 2013 and leaking confidential information in 2019, respectively.

The International Criminal Court (ICC)—a legal institution that lacks any enforcement mechanisms of its own—has charged numerous leaders with crimes, for which they’ve been prosecuted in the organization’s judicial divisions. Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta and the Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo both faced ICC charges of crimes against humanity; Kenyatta’s charges—initiated before he was president—were dropped, while Gbagbo was acquitted. Gbagbo’s charges are related to a five-month period of chaos and violence following his loss in the country’s 2010 presidential election.

Prosecutions can destabilize democracies…

Police fire tear gas toward supporters of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan during a protest against his arrest in Karachi on May 9. Asif Hassan/AFP via Getty Images

To be sure, prosecuting a former leader can also ignite political tensions and destabilize domestic politics. One of the most contemporary examples is Israel, where the charges of corruption against Benjamin Netanyahu sparked a political crisis in 2019 that continues to run its course. It resulted in a tumultuous power swing that saw five elections in four years with Netanyahu returning as prime minister in December 2022 despite his legal troubles. It’s unclear whether he’ll be found guilty, or whether the courts could enforce a guilty verdict.

Now back in power, Netanyahu has proposed a sweeping judicial overhaul that would give him final say over judge appointments and his government the power to overturn Supreme Court decisions. The proposal led to mass protests this year, and opponents call it a conflict of interest as Netanyahu remains a criminal defendant.

Former leaders have also taken extreme measures to avoid serving time after conviction, as several have done in El Salvador. Since a brutal civil war that ended in the 1990s, many of the country’s presidents have faced legal troubles, often corruption. Two presidents, Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sánchez Cerén, both fled to Nicaragua, where they have avoided jail time. Francisco Flores Pérez, president in the early 2000s, died awaiting trial in 2016. The only leader of the country who has served a sentence since 2000 is Antonio Saca—again, on corruption charges.

And in countries that have yet to establish a strong democracy and where the military wields considerable power, political leaders who have fallen out of favor with the army are more vulnerable to indictments and imprisonment. A slew of prime ministers has been either indicted or imprisoned in Pakistan, the latest being cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan. Khan’s brief arrest in May sparked nationwide protests and a more intense military crackdown on other party leaders ahead of general elections this fall.

…or help restore democratic legitimacy.

A protester shouts slogans in front of a caricature of South Korean President Park Geun-hye during a rally urging her impeachment in Seoul on Dec. 7, 2016. Jung Yeon-Je/AFP via Getty Images

But the indictments of leaders are not always a bad thing for democracies. They can help restore democratic legitimacy and serve as a way to reckon with past injustices from dictatorial regimes, as seen in the trials of former Argentine presidents Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone and former Uruguayan presidents Juan María Bordaberry and Gregorio Conrado Álvarez. Similarly in South Korea, the imprisonments of military dictator Chun Doo-hwan and former President Roh Tae-woo for their part in the fatal crackdown of the 1980 pro-democracy Gwangju Uprising served as a victory for the young democracy.

There is no blueprint for how the Trump cases will play out. In some settings, the trial of a former president has been a major test for democracy, while in others it’s demonstrated the independence of judicial institutions. One thing is certain: Whatever happens in the United States will likely do more to cement opinions of the country’s institutions rather than of the former president himself.

Editing and fact-checking by James Palmer and Drew Gorman. Graphics and creative direction by Lori Kelley. Photo research by Brooks Robinson.

Update: This piece has been updated to include the most recent charges against Trump concerning the 2020 presidential election.

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