I’d put more money on one of them dying than seeing the inside of a prison cell. The judge in the Trump trial explicitly stated that he did not want to put a sitting president in prison.
Trump isn’t a sitting president yet, he’s still a former president.
Judge Merchan said that before the guilty verdict, when Trump violated his gag order 10 times consecutively. His next words after “I don’t want to put you in jail” were “…but I will if you continue to jeopardize the judicial process.” (paraphrasing). Obviously, the judge did not want to resort to jail for criminal contempt because the case had a lot of eyes on it and jumping to jail before issuing warnings and fines gives the impression of impropriety or bias, which could have been grounds for a mistrial had he taken Trump’s bait.
Most people think he’s going to walk on the basis that he has no prior criminal convictions and that he’s the presumptive Republican nominee, but there’s also the fact that he’s shown no remorse for his crimes even after the verdict and that allowing him to escape a prison term with a slap on the wrist house arrest or a fine will not realistically deter him or others from committing the same crime.
I’d say it’s still a good possibility that he sees jail. Probably not for the max 3 year sentence, but some token amount of incarceration would be appropriate. He’ll likely be out before taking office should he actually win, and they’ll probably make special provisions for him to continue campaigning, so he probably won’t even spend that much time in an actual cell.
The real kicker is his next conviction will mean he has to contend with a criminal history, which will vastly increase his chances of receiving actual prison time. That all hinges on him not getting elected and pardoning himself for all the federal crimes he’s accused of, the most severe of which being his role in the J6 insurrection and the classified documents case which could easily land him in prison for the rest of his life.
His next words after “I don’t want to put you in jail” were “…but I will if you continue to jeopardize the judicial process.”
After the tenth contempt citation.
Most people think he’s going to walk on the basis that he has no prior criminal convictions and that he’s the presumptive Republican nominee, but there’s also the fact that he’s shown no remorse for his crimes even after the verdict and that allowing him to escape a prison term with a slap on the wrist house arrest or a fine will not realistically deter him or others from committing the same crime.
I doubt he’ll make this particular mistake another time, mostly because he’s got too much media scrutiny to still run around with high end call girls.
But when it comes to the actual governance? He’s not going to get punished for that.
I’d say it’s still a good possibility that he sees jail
I would not put any amount of money on it.
The real kicker is his next conviction will mean he has to contend with a criminal history
All the rest of the cases are either dropped or delayed until after the election. Either way, there’s not going to be a “next conviction” before it no longer matters.
Not sure why you cut that out of my original paragraph as if I didn’t already mention it.
I doubt he’ll make this particular mistake another time, mostly because he’s got too much media scrutiny to still run around with high end call girls.
Oh no, Trump has learned a valuable lesson, just not the one he was supposed to learn. He was supposed to learn “I should not commit fraud”, but instead he learned “Why bother with fraud when my idiot supporters would have voted for me anyway?”.
All the rest of the cases are either dropped or delayed until after the election. Either way, there’s not going to be a “next conviction” before it no longer matters.
Which is why it’s all the more important to keep him out of office. I understand the cynical outlook on the judicial process, especially after what we’ve seen so far. Between sympathetic judges treating Trump with kid gloves and him getting released on bail after stealing classified documents, it really does highlight that we are living in a two-tiered justice system. But I still believe that the process is working despite it’s obvious flaws, and that sooner or later, justice will catch up to Trump and he’ll be out of free passes.
A lot of people said that we would never even get as far as we have. It was “Trump will never be indicted”, which gave way to “There won’t ever be a trial”, to “He won’t be found guilty” to “they won’t sentence him to any prison time”.
We can only wait and see next month what they decide to do.
I’d put more money on one of them dying than seeing the inside of a prison cell. The judge in the Trump trial explicitly stated that he did not want to put a sitting president in prison.
Trump isn’t a sitting president yet, he’s still a former president.
Judge Merchan said that before the guilty verdict, when Trump violated his gag order 10 times consecutively. His next words after “I don’t want to put you in jail” were “…but I will if you continue to jeopardize the judicial process.” (paraphrasing). Obviously, the judge did not want to resort to jail for criminal contempt because the case had a lot of eyes on it and jumping to jail before issuing warnings and fines gives the impression of impropriety or bias, which could have been grounds for a mistrial had he taken Trump’s bait.
Most people think he’s going to walk on the basis that he has no prior criminal convictions and that he’s the presumptive Republican nominee, but there’s also the fact that he’s shown no remorse for his crimes even after the verdict and that allowing him to escape a prison term with a slap on the wrist house arrest or a fine will not realistically deter him or others from committing the same crime.
I’d say it’s still a good possibility that he sees jail. Probably not for the max 3 year sentence, but some token amount of incarceration would be appropriate. He’ll likely be out before taking office should he actually win, and they’ll probably make special provisions for him to continue campaigning, so he probably won’t even spend that much time in an actual cell.
The real kicker is his next conviction will mean he has to contend with a criminal history, which will vastly increase his chances of receiving actual prison time. That all hinges on him not getting elected and pardoning himself for all the federal crimes he’s accused of, the most severe of which being his role in the J6 insurrection and the classified documents case which could easily land him in prison for the rest of his life.
After the tenth contempt citation.
I doubt he’ll make this particular mistake another time, mostly because he’s got too much media scrutiny to still run around with high end call girls.
But when it comes to the actual governance? He’s not going to get punished for that.
I would not put any amount of money on it.
All the rest of the cases are either dropped or delayed until after the election. Either way, there’s not going to be a “next conviction” before it no longer matters.
Not sure why you cut that out of my original paragraph as if I didn’t already mention it.
Oh no, Trump has learned a valuable lesson, just not the one he was supposed to learn. He was supposed to learn “I should not commit fraud”, but instead he learned “Why bother with fraud when my idiot supporters would have voted for me anyway?”.
Which is why it’s all the more important to keep him out of office. I understand the cynical outlook on the judicial process, especially after what we’ve seen so far. Between sympathetic judges treating Trump with kid gloves and him getting released on bail after stealing classified documents, it really does highlight that we are living in a two-tiered justice system. But I still believe that the process is working despite it’s obvious flaws, and that sooner or later, justice will catch up to Trump and he’ll be out of free passes.
A lot of people said that we would never even get as far as we have. It was “Trump will never be indicted”, which gave way to “There won’t ever be a trial”, to “He won’t be found guilty” to “they won’t sentence him to any prison time”.
We can only wait and see next month what they decide to do.