Former President Donald Trump departs court after being found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on Thursday. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post

If Donald Trump wins back the presidency, he would once again have broad pardon power – but that federal authority would not overturn his state conviction in the New York hush money trial.

As president from 2017 to 2021, Trump pardoned many of his allies and friends, but those crimes involved federal charges.

New York’s governor, however, could issue such a pardon for Trump, but that seems highly unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Less clear is whether a sitting president could pardon himself for federal offenses – an untested area of the law that may become more critical if Trump is convicted in either of the two federal criminal cases filed against him.

Trump is charged in federal court in Florida with mishandling classified documents and trying to obstruct government efforts to retrieve them; he is charged in Washington, D.C,  with conspiring to obstruct the results of the 2020 election he lost.

He has pleaded not guilty in both cases, and both trials have been delayed.