Former US President, Donald Trump was found guilty on all charges in his New York “hush-money” trial on Thursday, and the judge will soon determine whether a former president should be imprisoned for a felony conviction for the first time.
Trump was found guilty of 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 its guilty verdict after a trial that stretched six weeks and featured more than 20 witnesses.
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Each of the 34 felony charges carries up to a $5,000 fine and a four-year prison sentence. But whether Trump will go to prison is another question — one that’s up to the judge at sentencing.
On his part, Trump described the trial as a “disgrace,” telling reporters he’s an “innocent man.”
Here are some key takeaways from Trump’s conviction:
When will Trump be sentenced?
The judge set a July 11 date for sentencing following the jury’s verdict on Thursday.
The timing is in line with similar white-collar felony cases, where sentencing often takes place anywhere from three to eight weeks after conviction.
The sentencing will happen four days before the start of the Republican National Convention.
What to expect from sentencing
The big question now is whether Trump could go to prison. The answer is uncertain. Judge Juan M. Merchan set sentencing for July 11, just days before Republicans are set to formally nominate him for president.
The charge of falsifying business records is a Class E felony in New York, the lowest tier of felony charges in the state. It is punishable by up to four years in prison, though the punishment would ultimately be up to the judge and there’s no guarantee he would give Trump time bars.
It’s unclear to what extent the judge may factor in the political and logistical complexities of jailing a former president who is running to reclaim the White House. Other punishments could include a fine or probation. And it’s possible the judge would allow Trump to avoid serving any punishment until after he exhausts his appeals.
Trump faces the threat of more serious prison time in the three other cases he’s facing, but those cases have gotten bogged down by appeals and other legal fights so it remains unclear whether any of them will go to trial before the November election.
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 offence. Trump would likely be ordered to serve the prison time concurrently for each count, so up to four years in total.
Trump could also be sentenced to home detention, where he would wear an ankle bracelet and be monitored rather than going to jail.
A home detention sentence would also make it possible for Trump to continue campaigning albeit virtually with the ability to hold news conferences and remain active on social media. Throughout the trial, Justice Juan Merchan stressed the importance of allowing Trump the ability to campaign and exercise his First Amendment rights as he seeks another term in the White House. But it’s just part of the equation that the judge must weigh in his decision.
What will the judge consider in Trump’s sentencing?
When determining a sentence, the court may take into account a variety of variables, such as the type and severity of the behaviour, the parties involved, the existence of victims, and the acknowledgement of responsibility. Trump has consistently refuted any involvement in the case.
The way a defendant acts during the trial may also be taken into consideration, therefore Trump’s repeated breaking of Merchan’s gag order might have a big impact on his sentence. Over a dozen times during the trial, Trump was charged with breaking a gag order that forbade him from speaking in public on potential witnesses, jurors, lawyers, and court personnel.
Trump’s sentencing may also be complicated by the lifetime Secret Service protection that he’s afforded as a former president. The issue came up during the trial when the judge held Trump in contempt for violating a gag order. Though Trump faced multiple fines, the judge expressed that jailing Trump was “the last thing I want to do” because it would have disrupted the trial and presented challenges for the Secret Service agents tasked with protecting the former president.
Trump’s imprisonment would likely need to include a rotation of Secret Service officers, and he would need to be isolated from other inmates. The former president’s food and personal items would likely need to be screened for his protection, among other logistical considerations.
No US prison has ever previously had to deal with the possible imprisonment of a former president. After Trump’s conviction on Thursday, the Secret Service said in a new statement that “today’s outcome has no bearing on the manner in which the United States Secret Service carries out its protective mission. Our security measures will proceed unchanged.”
Where could Trump be imprisoned?
Should Trump be sentenced to a period of home detention, the former president could carry out the sentence outside of New York, for instance, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where New York state would coordinate with Florida’s probation department, which would monitor Trump’s confinement, Horwitz said.
In the event that Trump is sentenced to jail time, the location would depend on the duration of his sentence.
If Trump faces more than one year in jail, New York law requires that his sentence be served in a New York penal facility. But if his sentence is shorter than a year, it would be served in a New York City correctional facility, such as Rikers Island.
What comes next?
Trump could seek to stay the execution of any sentence pending appeal, meaning that he wouldn’t have to start serving the sentence until an appeals court makes a decision, which is not uncommon in white-collar cases in New York federal courts, Horwitz said. The move could delay any jail time until the election — or even beyond.
In any case, though possible imprisonment raises some hurdles for Trump’s presidential campaign, his conviction does not restrict him from continuing to run even if he’s behind bars.
What are the avenues for appeal?
Following his sentencing, Trump may contest his conviction in the state’s trial court’s appellate division and potentially even the state supreme court. Trump’s attorneys have already begun preparing an appeal by raising issues with the accusations and verdicts from the trial.
Citing his daughter’s employment as the president of a firm that has served Democratic clients such as Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden, the defence has accused the judge of bias. The defence sought to withdraw from the case, but the judge denied their plea, stating that he was confident in his “ability to be fair and impartial.”
Trump’s lawyers may also raise on appeal the judge’s ruling limiting the testimony of a potential defence expert witness. The defence wanted to call Bradley Smith, a Republican law professor who served on the Federal Election Commission, to rebut the prosecution’s contention that the hush money payments amounted to campaign finance violations.
But the defence ended up not having him testify after the judge ruled he could give general background on the FEC but couldn’t interpret how federal campaign finance laws apply to the facts of Trump’s case or opine on whether Trump’s alleged actions violate those laws. There are often guardrails around expert testimony on legal matters, on the basis that it’s up to a judge, not an expert hired by one side or the other, to instruct jurors on applicable laws.
The defence may also argue that jurors were improperly allowed to hear sometimes graphic testimony from porn actor Stormy Daniels about her alleged sexual encounter with him in 2006. The defence unsuccessfully pushed for a mistrial over the tawdry details prosecutors elicited from Daniels. Defence lawyer Todd Blanche argued Daniels’ description of a power imbalance with the older, taller Trump, was a “dog whistle for rape,” irrelevant to the charges at hand, and “the kind of testimony that makes it impossible to come back from.”
What it means for the election
The conviction doesn’t bar Trump from continuing his campaign or becoming president. And he can still vote for himself in his home state of Florida as long as he stays out of prison in New York state.
Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who serves as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said on Thursday that Trump would do virtual rallies and campaign events if he’s convicted and sentenced to home confinement.
However, it’s unclear whether Trump’s once-unimaginable criminal conviction will have any impact at all on the election.
Leading strategists in both parties believe that Trump still remains well-positioned to defeat Biden, even as he now faces the prospect of a prison sentence and three separate criminal cases still outstanding. In the short term, at least, there were immediate signs that the guilty verdict was helping to unify the Republican Party’s disparate factions as GOP officials across the political spectrum rallied behind their embattled presumptive presidential nominee and hours after the verdict his campaign was already reporting a flood of fundraising dollars.
There has been some polling conducted on the prospect of a guilty verdict, although such hypothetical scenarios are notoriously difficult to predict.
