Former president Donald Trump has been found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the Democratic bastion of Manhattan. Trump’s sentencing has been set for July 11. Trump theoretically faces up to four years on each count:
Trump was convicted by the jury Thursday on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence before the 2016 presidential election. The jury in Manhattan returned a guilty verdict after a trial that stretched six weeks and featured more than 20 witnesses.
Each of the 34 felony charges carries up to a $5,000 fine and four-year prison sentence. But whether Trump will go to prison is another question — one that’s up to the judge at sentencing.
The minimum sentence for falsifying business records in the first degree is zero, so Trump could receive probation or conditional discharge, a sentence of no jail or up to four years for each offense. Trump would likely be ordered to serve the prison time concurrently for each count, so up to four years, total.
“The judge could sentence him to anything between zero and the max,” [lawyer Dan] Horwitz said. “So he could sentence him to a period of months in jail, he could sentence him to a period of weeks in jail, he could sentence him to a sentence where he is required, for example, to go to jail every weekend for a period of time and then serve the rest of the sentence on probation.”
In an analysis of comparable cases brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Norm Eisen, who has written a book about Trump’s 2020 election-related federal indictment and served as special counsel in the first impeachment of the former president, found that about 10% resulted in imprisonment. But the circumstances surrounding the case make any across-the-board comparison difficult.
Trump could also be sentenced to home detention, where he would wear an ankle bracelet and be monitored rather than going to jail. Horwitz suggested that a home detention sentence, which walks a middle ground between no punishment and a stint in state prison, might be the most likely outcome. It would also satisfy Trump’s unusual security and political situation.
There are a number of factors that the court can take into consideration for sentencing, including …. acceptance of responsibility. Trump has repeatedly denied any guilt in the case.
Trump has not accepted “responsibility,” and his campaign responded to the verdict by sending out a fundraising email that said, “I am a political prisoner.” That could result in Trump getting a much stiffer sentence.
That’s true even though Trump’s prosecution clearly had a political element. The left-wing Manhattan prosecutor chose to prosecute this case against Trump, even though the Federal Election Commission had declined to prosecute Trump, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office had similarly declined to prosecute Trump, over the payments and campaign finance records at issue in the case. Former FEC Commissioner Brad Smith said Trump’s conduct was not a violation of federal election law at all, yet the Manhattan prosecution alleged that Trump violated federal election law.
Trump’s case in Manhattan was presided over by Judge Juan Merchan, a donor to President Biden. Judge Merchan’s daughter “serves as the president of Authentic Campaigns — a group that represents Democrat politicians and political action committees.” Her “clients, like Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., have fundraised off of Trump’s indictment and criminal trial.”
He was an unfavorable draw for Trump. Judge Merchan does not not appear to have been randomly assigned to the case, as court rules mandated. Judge Merchan’s jury instructions were favorable to the prosecution, not Trump. The judge excluded key evidence that Trump sought to introduce.
Trump’s own legal team relied on a poor legal strategy, exacerbating the problems caused by a judge hostile to Trump, and a jury overwhelmingly hostile to Trump.
It is very suspicious that Judge Merchan, of all judges, ended up presiding over Trump’s trial. As a complaint filed about the case assignment to Judge Merchan noted, it was suspicious that Merchan — of all the many judges in Manhattan — was assigned to hear three successive Trump-related cases, with none of those cases being heard by any of the other judges. The chances of that happening at random are less than 1 in 15,000, indicating that the assignment of the case to Judge Merchan was not, in fact, random:
“Merchan currently presides over the criminal case against President Trump brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg,”
“Merchan also presided over the criminal trial against the Trump Organization and will be presiding over the criminal trial of Steve Bannon, a senior advisor in President Trump’s White House and a prominent advocate for President Trump,” [the complaint] continued, noting that there were at least two dozen sitting justices eligible to oversee the cases, but Merchan — an acting justice — was selected for all three related to the presumptive 2024 GOP nominee for president and his allies.
“If justices were indeed being randomly assigned in the Criminal Term, the probability of two specific criminal cases being assigned to the same justice is quite low, and the probability of three specific criminal cases being assigned to the same justice is infinitesimally small. And yet, we see Acting Justice Merchan on all three cases.”
With Trump’s conviction, Joe Biden becomes the immediate favorite to win the 2024 election. Polls showed that “double haters” — people who dislike both Trump and Biden — were likely to vote against Trump if he was convicted, but otherwise might vote against Biden. Now, they will likely vote for Biden. Prediction markets now show Biden is favored to win the election, unlike a week ago, when Trump was favored to win.
Assuming Biden wins the general election, the Democrats may pick up both houses of Congress on his coattails. If that happens, the Democrats will likely abolish the filibuster to push through a wave of controversial progressive legislation that currently cannot pass the Senate. In the current Senate, two Democrats — Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — opposed abolishing the filibuster. But both of them are retiring from the Senate, and all other Democrats will vote to get rid of the filibuster in order to pass sweeping changes to our laws (such as tax, labor, and criminal laws) that previously could not pass Congress. They may be able to fundamentally transform the country as a result, pushing it leftward to an unprecedented degree.
A candidate who is convicted — and facing multiple indictments — is likely to lose the general election, even if the conviction or prosecutions are unfair. Waging a political campaign against an incumbent while being prosecuted is like trying to win a boxing match while being stung by a swarm of bees.
Unless Republicans nominate someone else than Trump, Republicans are very likely to lose the Presidential election. Republicans should replace Trump as their presidential nominee, but they probably won’t. The result is likely to be four more years of living under the rule of Joe Biden, which means rising taxes and government spending and eventually a very sluggish economy.
As a newspaper notes,
Donald Trump’s campaign was quick to fundraise off the back of the guilty verdict, sending out an email to supporters within minutes of the news.
The email headline reads:
BREAKING FROM TRUMP: I AM A POLITICAL PRISONER!
It goes on to ask the recipient whether “this is the end of America?” before saying that Trump had been convicted “in a RIGGED political Witch Hunt trial: I DID NOTHING WRONG!”
The fundraising email continues:
They’ve raided my home, arrested me, took my mugshot, AND NOW THEY’VE JUST CONVICTED ME!
But with your support at this moment in history, WE WILL WIN BACK THE WHITE HOUSE AND MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
This claim that he is a “political prisoner” will not go over well with the judge at Trump’s sentencing on July 11. He could very well be in jail at the time of the November election.
