Will he go to jail? Could he pardon himself? Questions and answers about Trump’s future

Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in the case Stormy Daniels name of a porn actress to whom the former president, then a candidate for the White House, paid $130,000 in 2016 to buy her silence about an extramarital relationship that he denies, left behind this Thursday the aroma of historical events, as well like a trail of questions whose answer is not clear in all cases, due to the lack of precedents. Never has a former president been found guilty in a criminal trial, so the landscape now opening up in American politics is as uncertain as it has been repeatedly since the real estate magnate and reality television star burst onto the scene. Below, we review what is known and what is still unknown about what could happen to Trump in the coming months.

What are the next steps after the verdict?

Trump is required to report to the New York City Probation Department to certify his background and the state of his mental health and respond to an interview that will evaluate the possible flight risk of one of the most famous men on the planet. Obviously, this is almost non-existent.

When will the sentence be known?

The jury, made up of 12 New Yorkers, five women and seven men, has concluded that Trump committed 34 serious crimes of falsifying business records (invoices, checks and accounting notes) to cover up the payment to Daniels shortly before the 2016 election, in the ones in which the magnate defeated Hillary Clinton and won the White House. The judge in the case, Juan Merchan, has set the reading of the sentence for July 11.

Can the defense appeal it?

Yes, you have 30 days to announce that you will do so, and six months to do so. His defense has indicated that his plans include reaching the Supreme Court. They can build that resource around procedural issues, such as the admission of witnesses who were not anticipated. Nothing indicates that these appeals will be resolved before November 5, the day on which the presidential elections are scheduled to be held that will pit the accused against the Democratic candidate, President Joe Biden. Trump has insisted time and again that this has been a “politically motivated trial,” mounted by the Biden Administration to eliminate his main opponent at the polls, although his lawyers have not been able to provide any evidence of this alleged collusion between the district attorney who has put together the accusation, Democrat Alvin Bragg, and the White House.

Is there an option for him to end up in jail?

Yes, although it is unlikely. For each of those charges, “class E nonviolent felonies,” the lowest on the scale of New York State law, the magistrate can impose a sentence of between 16 months and four years, although he can also decide that are fulfilled simultaneously, in which case, the maximum would continue to be four years in total. In favor of the former president, he has no criminal record. Many analysts indicate that Merchan will not go as far as sending him to prison, also given the inmate’s age: 77 years. It is more likely that he will sentence you to a fine or release you on bail.

As guilty of a criminal offense, could he be president?

Yes. The US Constitution does not prevent him from seeking office; Nor does it contemplate the prohibition of a person convicted by justice from being president, not even if he ends up in jail, except if he does so for a very specific crime: that of insurrection. The former president faces 91 charges in four different trials (in addition to the one in New York, they are in Atlanta, Fort Piece, in Florida, and Washington), but none of them is that of insurrection.

Is there any precedent for a prisoner at the doors of the White House?

To find it, you have to go back to 1920. That’s when a politician named Eugene Debs campaigned from prison, as leader of the Socialist Party of America, while serving a sentence for violating the Espionage Act of 1917 for making speeches critical of the role of United States in World War I. His campaign was a disaster and he only garnered a million votes (then a Republican won, Warren Harding, the twenty-ninth president of the United States, who died in office). Debs’s squalid numbers somewhat invalidate his reliability as a precedent: unlike Trump, who has a serious chance of beating Biden, Debs never had any chance of victory.

Will you be able to vote in the elections?

Yes. Although some States prohibit a prisoner from exercising some of his electoral rights, that is not the case in Florida, where the former president has his residence, in the Mar-a-Lago mansion, in Palm Beach. The law of that territory says that the regulations of the place where he was convicted govern, that is, that of New York. And in that State you would not be prohibited from voting.

Could he pardon himself if he becomes president?

No. There is some debate about whether he could do so if, as in the other three cases, the crimes were federal, but there is no doubt that, being state in scope, the 34 charges for which he was found guilty on Thursday do not count. with the wildcard to get himself out of trouble.

How will the guilty verdict affect his presidential campaign?

It all depends on how his potential voters take the news of his conviction. Four days after Merchan hands down his sentence, the Republican National Convention will begin, a gathering of delegates from across the country to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to hail Trump as the party’s nominee. The guilty verdict presents no obstacle to that happening. For now, the judicial bombshell known this Thursday, a unanimous verdict in a predominantly Democratic city that was reached faster than expected, triggered donations from individuals to the Trump campaign. Every time the tycoon has added a new mess with justice, the effect has been similar. An NPR public radio poll, published this Thursday, concluded that the outcome of the trial will not influence registered voters: two-thirds said that a guilty verdict would not change their voting intention, and 15% said that it would even encourage them. even more to vote for Trump.

What do the polls say about your presidential expectations?

Five months before the polls, the Republican candidate leads some of the most relevant polls, which give him an advantage in certain decisive states. When news of his first indictment became known, this one from New York, the former president was a candidate for the White House in his lowest hours. It was at that moment that his luck changed. In the primaries, he easily swept aside a dozen rivals within his own party. Now the unknown is to see not so much how his base of followers, who border on worshiping the leader of a cult, will behave, but rather to see how the undecided will act.

What effect will this case have on the rest of the pending accounts?

From a legal point of view, none. The other three are separate cases, but united by something: none of them will begin before the elections, thanks to the defense’s successful delaying maneuvers. In Atlanta, he is accused of interfering in the 2020 elections in the State of Georgia, where he lost something like half of the presidency. In Washington, they are waiting for him to clarify whether he maneuvered to reverse the result of the polls in which Biden won and whether he is guilty of the assault on the Capitol. And in Florida, the accusations are for the handling of hundreds of secret or classified documents that he took from the White House when he left office and that he later repeatedly refused to return to the National Archives, their rightful owners.

And what about the Secret Service?

The agents assigned to protect a former president have to ensure his safety 24 hours a day, seven days a week, wherever he is. If he ends up behind bars, his obligation is to do his job in prison.

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