Judge Beryl Howell’s finding of “reason to believe” that President Trump “would ‘flee from prosecution’” is so far merely a legal footnote, but what if the 45th president were to try to make a run for it? That could preview a high-stakes chase that makes O.J. Simpson’s Bronco escapades look like a driving test. 

While there is some ambiguity as to Judge Howell’s assessment of that risk — a transcript from her district court appears to have her agreeing with the proposition that the “risk of flight” for Mr. Trump “doesn’t make a lot of sense” — the crush of charges handed up against the 77-year-old former president and the prospect of a long prison term stir the imagination as to what he would do if he’s convicted. 

Mr. Trump’s request for an April 2026 trial date with respect to his January 6 case suggests that he is in no hurry for a verdict. His latest indictment, in Georgia, offers a difficult path toward a pardon should a jury there find him guilty of racketeering and other crimes. Mr. Trump faces a total of 91 federal and state charges. Combined, they carry a maximum of more than 700 years behind bars. 

Even were Mr. Trump to make it back to the White House, the federal pardon power might help him but, the Constitution suggests, only in respect of federal charges. His own former attorney general, William Barr, on Thursday called those charges “legitimate.”

The state charges that have emerged from New York County and Fulton County lie outside of the Constitution’s grant of presidential pardon power. In any event, there is — sort of — precedent of heading overseas to avoid a racketeering trial.

In 1983, Mayor Giuliani — now Mr. Trump’s co-defendant, then a prosecutor in New York’s Southern District — charged the businessman Marc Rich with 65 criminal counts, many stemming from trading oil with Iran. Rich fled to Switzerland even before those charges were filed.

Mr. Giuliani then sought to extradite Rich and a partner, Pincus Green. The court in Switzerland refused the request  on the grounds that what Rich and Mr. Green were accused of wasn’t illegal under Swiss law. Rich and Mr. Green were pardoned by President Clinton hours before he left office.

Rich died overseas, without returning to America.

Could Mr. Trump try something similar? At an October 2020 rally at Macon, Georgia, the 45th president mused that if he lost the election, “Maybe I’ll have to leave the country, I don’t know.” Foreign leaders like Evo Morales, Ferdinand Marcos, and Victor Yanukovych have all fled native soil after contested elections, joining history’s long list of heads of states who ended their days in exile. 

It is not only potentates who have fled. An intelligence consultant, Edward Snowden, has found refuge from American criminal charges in Russia while the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, who faces multiple charges relating to the publication of classified secrets, was given a haven at London’s Ecuadorian embassy.

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. Those countries do have extradition accords with America. He has long eyed business opportunities in Russia. 

Even the existence of an extradition agreement, though, would be no guarantee that America could reclaim Mr. Trump if his private jet takes him abroad. The former president could claim political asylum, an extension of his argument that the cases against him are politically motivated efforts by President Biden and others to keep him off the ballot.

Mr. Trump could also invoke the “political-offense exception.” The Legal Information Institute defines that as a limit on a “sovereign state’s responsibilities under an extradition treaty or legislation” that bars extradition for “political crimes.” It is now a “standard provision in almost all extradition treaties around the world.” In international law, it is known as the clause d’attentat or the clause Belge.   

Even where extradition rules are in force and the political offense exception does not apply, it could still be arduous to recover a defendant who has gone on the lam. Mr. Assange, after he was removed from the Ecuadorian outpost by the Metropolitan Police, has been held — for four years, so far — at Belmarsh prison, at London, as he battles America’s extradition request. He, like Mr. Trump, faces charges under the Espionage Act.

Then again, too, there is the possibility that, were Mr. Trump to get to a foreign country, America could try to seize him and bring him home without going through an extradition treaty. The Supreme Court, in a famous case, United States v. Alvarez-Machain, ruled that America could still try a suspect if he had been kidnapped overseas by American law enforcement and returned to America for trial. 

Dr. Alvarez-Machain was eventually tried for assisting drug dealers as they tortured an employee of our Drug Enforcement Administration. In the end, the physician was acquitted in an American court and returned to Mexico.