No, Donald Trump is not going to flee the country: Following four indictments, some opponents of the former president have speculated that he might avoid jail by leaving the country. That such a thing would happen is highly, highly unlikely.
Would Donald Trump Run Away?
Donald Trump has been indicted four times this year, in four different jurisdictions. His defense, it appears, is to maintain his innocence, fight every charge as hard as he can, and frequently attack the opposing lawyers and judges. And he’s going to do it while running for president again, and hoping to get elected and dispense with the charges — the federal ones, anyway — with either pardons or dismissals of the cases.
But what he seems unlikely to do is flee the country to avoid the possibility of going to prison. However, a fantasy appears to have emerged among some opponents of the ex-president that Trump would try to get away from the possibility of a criminal conviction by fleeing.
In Byline Times last week, journalist Heidi Siegmund Cuda predicted that Trump will leave the country, in what amounts to an entertaining bit of fan fiction.
“Since 2017, I have predicted Trump — who to Putin is just another Yanukovych — will likely flee with 40 of his best cronies to Moscow. Paul Manafort’s clients often run from the bloody revolutions they incited,” Cuda writes. She then quoted someone else as stating that Trump may end up somewhere else.
Ex-federal agent Martin Sheil tells the journalist that, because “Russia does not have enough golf courses to keep Donald entertained,” the former president is more likely to land in the Middle East.
“Trump owns a golf course in Dubai which is also a leading global money-laundering center,” Sheil told Cuda. “So Trump can take his money and his golf clubs to a warm weather safe haven where it is not believed the UAE retains a viable extradition treaty with the US.”
The conservative newspaper The New York Sun, also this month, looked at the question of where Trump might flee, were he to jump bail.
“Mr. Trump owns properties in the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan, two countries that do not have extradition agreements with America — meaning that there would be no ready mechanism to pull the former president back to these shores. He also owns resorts in Ireland, in County Clare, and Scotland, at Turnberry,” the Sun said. “Those countries do have extradition accords with America. He has long eyed business opportunities in Russia.”
Trump did, after all, joke on Truth Social recently that he might flee, in reaction to the $200,000 bond in the Georgia case.
“The failed District Attorney of Fulton County (Atlanta), Fani Willis, insisted on a $200,000 Bond from me. I assume, therefore, that she thought I was a “flight” risk,” Trump wrote in the post. “I’d fly far away, maybe to Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, share a gold domed suite with Vladimir, never to be seen or heard from again.”
Trump has joked about that before, even stating in a 2020 rally “Maybe I’ll have to leave the country, I don’t know.” On both occasions, he was kidding. There was also a report this week that Trump had secretly transferred ownership of Mar-a-Lago to his son, but that was based on a Zillow listing that turned out to be wrong.
But regardless of all of that, it’s highly unlikely that Trump would ever flee the country. And the speculation just goes to show that after all these years, the “resistance” to Trump knows very little about the man they spend so much time opposing.
First of all, Trump is currently running for president and is the clear Republican frontrunner, and you can’t run for president from Dubai. Furthermore, a Trump committed to spending the rest of his days in another country would be walking away from everything he is known to love most, whether it’s his many residents, his plane, his favorite American foods, or — perhaps most of all — the adoring crowds of MAGA nation.
Author Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles over the years that focus on politics, technology, and the economy for over a decade. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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