When Presidents Go To Jail

France sent Nicolas Sarkozy to prison in October 2025, the first former head of a European Union state to serve time for corruption.¹ South Korea has imprisoned two presidents in the past decade, pardoned both, and just removed a third for attempting a coup.² Peru converted a facility into a dedicated prison for former presidents because they keep sending them there.³ No American president has ever gone to prison. That is not a coincidence. Successful accountability requires the president’s own party to fracture, and American Republicans have made fracture lethal.

Let’s start with South Korea. When journalists discovered in 2016 that President Park Geun-hye had allowed an unelected confidante with no security clearance to access classified documents and extort roughly $70 million from Korean conglomerates, sixteen million South Koreans took to the streets over twenty weeks of sustained protest.⁴ At the peak, on December 3, 2016, 2.32 million people gathered in a single demonstration.⁵ The confidante, Choi Soon-sil, held no official position. She received draft presidential speeches for editing before delivery. She shaped policy from the shadows while funneling corporate money through foundations she controlled.⁶ A parallel government, run by someone no one elected and no one could hold accountable.

Sixty-two legislators from Park’s own Saenuri Party crossed over to vote for impeachment, producing the supermajority required for removal.⁷ Her party controlled enough seats to block impeachment and chose not to. While Park’s trial was still ongoing, the party, by then renamed the Liberty Korea Party, expelled her entirely. Party chairman Hong Joon-pyo declared that they had to cast off their yoke as the Park Geun-hye party.⁸

In December 2024, President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, deploying soldiers to surround the National Assembly. The legislature voted 190–0 to nullify the order within three hours.⁹ Eighteen members of Yoon’s own People Power Party defected and voted with the opposition. His party’s leader publicly called for removal.⁹ The Constitutional Court unanimously upheld impeachment in April 2025.² Yoon now faces insurrection charges.

Tom Ginsburg, Aziz Huq, and David Landau examined over 200 impeachment attempts worldwide between 1990 and 2018 for the University of Chicago Law Review. Ten resulted in removal. In almost every case, success required members of the president’s own party to defect.⁷

Sixty-two Korean legislators crossed over. Eighteen of Yoon’s party members voted against him.

Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Trump after January 6th. Within one election cycle, eight of those ten were gone. Liz Cheney, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Peter Meijer, and Tom Rice lost primaries to Trump-backed challengers. Adam Kinzinger, Fred Upton, Anthony Gonzalez, and John Katko retired rather than face voters.¹⁰ The party did not fracture. It purged. If Trump ordered a coup tomorrow, would more than five Republicans vote against it? The ten who broke ranks after January 6th already answered that question with their careers.

Then there’s Peru, which has imprisoned essentially every living former president since 1990.³ Alberto Fujimori served 16 years of a 25-year sentence for ordering death squads.³ Alejandro Toledo received more than 20 years for taking $35 million in bribes.¹¹ Ollanta Humala got 15 years for illicit campaign contributions.¹² Pedro Castillo sits in prison now, sentenced to 11.5 years for conspiracy after attempting to dissolve Congress and rule by decree.¹³

The international evidence is unambiguous. Accountability happens. Even in systems that looked captured until they were not. But it requires a ruling party willing to fracture, and Republicans have demonstrated they will not. Every Republican who voted their conscience on January 6th paid for it with their career. The rest of the caucus got the message. The next time will be worse.

The path forward runs through the states where prosecution of corruption and interstate compacts can facilitate effective governance as opposition to the GOP electoral autocracy.

The Existentialist Republic has written the playbook. How states prosecute. How activists can generate leverage. How we coordinate when Congress hands over all its power and the judiciary goes all in on the Unitary Executive Theory. Find the training materials for free at buymeacoffee.com/TheER. Merch at TheExistentialistRepublic.com.

References

Al Jazeera. (2025, October 21). Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy starts five-year jail term. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/21/former-french-president-nicolas-sarkozy-starts-five-year-jail-term
Congressional Research Service. (2025, January). South Korean political crisis: Martial law and impeachment. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12474
National Public Radio. (2023, July 8). All the prison’s presidents: Peru’s special jail for ex-leaders is all full up. https://www.npr.org/2023/07/08/1186508281/peru-prison-ex-presidents
Dissent Magazine. (2017, October 23). Revolution by candlelight: How South Koreans toppled a government. https://dissentmagazine.org/article/revolution-by-candlelight-how-south-koreans-toppled-a-government/
Global Nonviolent Action Database. (n.d.). South Koreans demonstrate for President Park Guen-hye’s resignation (Candlelight Revolution), 2016–2017. Swarthmore College. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/south-koreans-demonstrate-president-park-guen-hyes-resignation-candlelight-revolution-2016-2
Al Jazeera. (2018, February 13). S Korea: Choi Soon-sil jailed 20 years for corruption. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/2/13/s-korea-choi-soon-sil-jailed-20-years-for-corruption
Ginsburg, T., Huq, A., & Landau, D. (2021). The comparative constitutional law of presidential impeachment. University of Chicago Law Review, 88(1), 81–180.
Korea Times. (2017, November 3). Park expelled from LKP. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2024/10/113_238754.html
Common Dreams. (2024, December 4). South Korean Parliament votes 190–0 to reverse martial law edict. https://www.commondreams.org/news/south-korea-martial-law
CBS News. (2022, August 17). Here’s how 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump fared in the 2022 primary season. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/liz-cheney-house-republicans-who-voted-to-impeach-trump-fates-primaries-2022/
Al Jazeera. (2024, October 22). Peru’s ex-president Toledo sentenced to more than 20 years in bribery case. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/22/peruvian-ex-president-sentenced-to-more-than-20-years-in-bribery-case
Al Jazeera. (2025, April 16). Peru jails ex-president Humala for 15 years over money laundering. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/16/1442
Al Jazeera. (2025, November 27). Former Peru President Pedro Castillo sentenced to 11.5 years in prison. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/27/former-peru-president-pedro-castillo-sentenced-to-11-5-years-in-prison