Nearly a quarter of Republican voters said that they want President Donald Trump to run for a third term in 2028, despite his being ineligible, according to a new poll.

According to the most recent Emerson College poll, that while 30% would vote for Vice President-elect JD Vance in a hypothetical 2028 Republican primary, 23% want Trump to run for a third term.  Another 28% were undecided. The poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters between November 20-22, and has a margin of error of 3%.

As it stands, the 22nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits a president from holding the office twice. An exception is made if a president is replaced with less than two years left of their term. For example, President Lyndon Johnson replaced John F. Kennedy in 1963 with a year left to his term. Johnson won in 1964, and could have run again in 1968, but chose not to. The only president to serve more than two terms is Franklin Roosevelt, who was elected four times in a row prior to the 22nd Amendment being ratified.

READ MORE: Trump to Seek Third Term If Re-Elected ‘Because They Spied on My Campaign’

Despite the constitutional prohibition, Trump has repeatedly made comments about running again. A common refrain during his rallies during his first term was that he’d never leave the White House. And just last week, he again made a reference to a 2028 run in a meeting with House Republicans, according to The Hill.

“I suspect I won’t be running again, unless you do something,” Trump said. “Unless you say, ‘He’s so good, we have to just figure it out.’”

This summer during his campaign, at a Christian summit he told people that if they voted for him to win the 2024 election, “you won’t have to do do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians.”

However, in an interview on Fox News, Trump said he was referring specifically for voting for him, not voting in general, according to the Guardian.

“That statement is very simple, I said, ‘Vote for me, you’re not gonna have to do it ever again,’” Trump said. “It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group, they don’t vote. And I’m explaining that to them. You never vote. This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country, you won’t have to vote any more, I won’t need your vote any more, you can go back to not voting.”

In the interview, he said that he would leave after his second term was up, adding “I did last time,” referring to his loss in the 2020 election. While that is true, he constantly claimed that the election was “stolen,” leading Trump supporters to raid the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an attempt to stop the electoral votes from being certified, formalizing President Joe Biden’s win.

Image via Reuters

After reports that former President Donald Trump pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reject a ceasefire deal, some have called for him to be prosecuted under the Logan Act. But it’s unlikely to actually happen.

On Tuesday afternoon, lawyer and CNN contributor Steve Vladeck posted on X, “Stop trying to make the Logan Act happen. (Because it’s unconstitutionally vague and an unconstitutionally overbroad content-based restriction on speech that’s never been successfully used to prosecute anyone.)”

Stop trying to make the Logan Act happen.

(Because it’s unconstitutionally vague and an unconstitutionally overbroad content-based restriction on speech that’s never been successfully used to prosecute anyone.)

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) August 20, 2024

Vladeck is likely correct — particularly since his area of legal expertise is in national security law with an emphasis on war crimes. But let’s look into it.

READ MORE: ‘Close’: Trump Claims World War III Could Erupt if He Does Not Become President Again

What is the Logan Act?

The Logan Act is a law dating back to 1799. It makes it illegal for an unauthorized American citizen to negotiate with foreign governments. It’s a felony, punishable with up to three years in prison.

It was named after Dr. George Logan of Pennsylvania, who in 1798 attempted to negotiate with the French government during the “Quasi-War.” Logan was a Democratic-Republican, but the U.S. government was controlled at the time by the Federalist party. The Federalists said Logan was trying to undermine their government, and passed the act in order to stop it from happening again.

Since then, people have been accused of violating the act, but nothing has ever come from it. Logan himself ended up being appointed and elected to the Senate and even served as a legitimate U.S. ambassador.

How has Trump allegedly violated the Logan Act?

Trump has been accused a few times of violating the Logan Act after the end of his presidency. In July, Trump met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, according to Newsweek. Orbán said Trump told him that if Trump were re-elected he wouldn’t “give a single penny” to Ukraine. Orbán is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

More recently, however, Trump allegedly spoke with Netanyahu, according to The New Republic. Reportedly, Trump has asked Netanyahu to not accept the ceasefire deal proposed by the Biden administration until after the election, since a ceasefire could boost the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Netanyahu’s side denied last week that he discussed the ceasefire deal with Trump.

Why Trump likely won’t be prosecuted

As Vladeck says, no one has ever been successfully prosecuted under the Logan Act. But it goes farther than that. Not only has no one been successfully prosecuted, there’ve only been two people charged with it. And both of those were in the 1800s; once in 1802 and once in 1852.

There are also questions as to whether or not the act is even constitutional. Though it has never been officially ruled on, a 1964 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said the act likely ran afoul of the Sixth Amendment, the right to a speedy and fair trial.

“That doubt is engendered by the statute’s use of the vague and indefinite terms, ‘defeat’ and ‘measures’. Neither of these words is an abstraction of common certainty or possesses a definite statutory or judicial definition,” Judge William Bernard Herlands wrote in his decision, though he decided against ruling specifically on the constitutional question.

Given the unlikelihood of a successful prosecution — and the potential for the Logan Act to get thrown out entirely — many prosecutors would find it foolhardy to try to charge Trump under this particular law.

Former head of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele accused the judge of dragging her feet in former President Donald Trump’s case about improper handling of classified documents.

On Friday, Trump’s defense lawyers put forth a motion to dismiss special counsel Jack Smith under allegations that he was illegally appointed, according to the Associated Press. Despite admitting that Smith’s appointment appears to be supported by precedent, Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon agreed to a three-day hearing to determine the challenge’s validity, according to The Washington Post. While defense attorneys will often challenge the standing of the prosecution, not every challenge necessarily warrants a full hearing.

Steele called out Cannon on Sunday’s edition of Inside with Jen Psaki on MSNBC. He called the particular challenge against Smith a “long shot,” according to The Hill, and said most judges would dismiss it out of hand.

READ MORE: Judge Cannon’s ‘Mind Boggling’ Move Could Put Witnesses at Risk, Experts Warn

“But apparently, Judge Cannon just had to have a hearing about it. It’s the last delay tactic from a judge who’s wasted countless months on frivolous motions. She has all but refused to allow Trump’s case to go to trial and still, still hasn’t even set a date for the trial to begin,” Steele said. He also accused Cannon of “effectively putting the prosecution on trial.”

Cannon has faced much criticism over her handling of the Trump documents case. In May, she postponed the trial indefinitely, putting the kibosh on hopes that the case would be heard before the November election. Her reasoning was that it would be “imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court,” referring to motions like the one to dismiss Smith.

Rulings like this have led legal experts to trash Cannon. Constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis called Cannon “incompetently bad.” George Conway, a lawyer and founder of the conservative anti-Trump The Lincoln Project, said Cannon “doesn’t know the most basic rule governing criminal conspiracies.” Conway’s comment was in response to Cannon appearing unfamiliar with the Pinkerton rule, which holds that everyone involved in a conspiracy can be held liable for crimes committed by co-conspirators. This appears to back up NBC News legal analyst Joyce Vance’s statement that Smith has to “spoon feed… the law” to Judge Cannon.

One month ago, Laurence Tribe, a top constitutional scholar and University Professor Emeritus at Harvard, said that Cannon would likely be removed from the Trump documents case.

“Cannon’s wildly lawless rejection of Special Counsel Smith’s clearly correct request for a gag order against fake and dangerous claims that the FBI was ordered to assassinate him is good news,” Tribe wrote on X. “It’s the smoking gun that will finally lead to her removal from the stolen secrets case.”