The reports that President Trump will officially launch another campaign for the White House on November 14 raise questions: Is he already a candidate in the eyes of the law? What implications does this have on the justice department investigations of Mr. Trump? 

Adding another complexity to the mix is a report out Friday from House Republicans signaling their eagerness to launch their own investigations of the Department of Justice.

As for the status of Mr. Trump’s candidacy, the short answer is that it’s complicated and the persons responsible for making that determination are unlikely to step in.

Axios reports that Mr. Trump and his inner circle are eyeing a post-midterm launch date of November 14, and that some of his allies are already clearing the calendar and preparing for travel. While campaign announcements are often public events with plenty of fanfare and theater, they are technically not, according to federal election law, what makes someone a candidate.

Instead, one becomes a candidate after starting to refer to oneself as a candidate, making moves to qualify for a ballot, or taking an “action indicating that he or she has decided to become a candidate,” according to an attorney at the Washington, D.C., firm Wiley Rein, Caleb Burns.

He says these actions would theoretically make a candidacy official in the eyes of the Federal Elections Commission, and “then all the requirements of federal campaign finance law attach.”

“Whether this has, in fact, occurred can be a difficult interpretive question for regulators,” Mr. Burns tells the Sun. 

“For example, was someone’s reference to a candidacy in a news report in the context of gauging whether to run,” he added, “or did the reference suggest that the person is actively campaigning?”

Mr. Trump has historically toed that line, and he did so again  Thursday night in saying he is “very, very, very” likely to run in 2024 and that supporters, and everyone else, should “get ready.”

“I won twice, and did much better the second time than I did the first,” Mr. Trump said. “And now, in order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again. Okay?”

The people in charge of deciding whether Mr. Trump has crossed the threshold of candidacy don’t have a  great track record of actually stepping in to make such calls, according to the president of the New York County Lawyers Association, Vincent Chang.

“I do think the laws are not enforced very strictly,” he tells the Sun. “There haven’t been a whole lot of successful enforcement actions in this area and candidates skirt the line all the time.”

Mr. Chang spoke to the Sun in reference to a potential bid from the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who appears to be waiting to see what Mr. Trump does before making a decision on a presidential run.

He says “there is a regulatory advantage to not announcing” and not facing the scrutiny of the Federal Elections Commission, adding that in the “gray area” of pre-official announcement campaigning, “there is little successful enforcement.”

This dysfunction may come down to partisan disagreements on what exactly qualifies as crossing the threshold into candidacy among the commission’s six-member board, which is required to be composed of three Democrats and three Republicans.

In addition to potentially facing scrutiny from the FEC, Mr. Trump is a target of the Department of Justice’s ongoing investigations into the events of January 6, 2021, and the presidential documents seized at his Mar-a-Lago address.

Some have speculated that a department memo released in May concerning the special treatment of “politically sensitive individuals” meant that a potential indictment of Mr. Trump would come between the midterm elections and his candidacy announcement.

While this would theoretically give the justice department a very narrow window to deliver such an indictment, it’s not clear if that speculation will actually play out.

Another factor is that control of Congress could change this year, and a Republican House would be almost sure to launch investigations of the department.

The probable future speaker of the House, Congressman Kevin McCarthy, has already signaled he backs such probes and has told Attorney General Garland to “preserve your documents and clear your calendar.”

The current ranking Republican and likely future chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has also signaled intent to launch investigations into the FBI and the Department of Justice.

Alongside the investigations expected from the House, the FBI and the justice department could also find their funding cut under a Republican-controlled House.

Following the raid on Mar-a-Lago in August, many from the House Freedom Caucus, among other Republicans, called to “defund the FBI.”

Although other Republican House members have since promised that the GOP would do no such thing, the Freedom Caucus and its members are expected to have considerable sway in the new Congress — as they did when Republicans captured a House majority in 2014.