Despite being found guilty of trying to hide hush-money payments meant to stop rumours of affairs, Donald Trump may not have to worry about anything until after the election in November.
A Manhattan jury found the former president, who is again the likely Republican candidate, guilty on Thursday of all 34 counts of falsifying business records for allegedly helping to hide the payments. The maximum sentence for him is four years.
Legal experts say that Trump is likely to stay out of jail for the foreseeable future because he has many options for appealing the verdict and delaying the scheduled sentencing.
“His appeal could take months or even years to finish,” said Peter Pullano, a criminal defence lawyer with many years of experience in New York state.
If that happens, the resolution of Trump’s felony conviction will definitely happen after November. That case is probably the only one of his four criminal cases that will go to trial before the election. This means that he will probably be able to run for office free of charge.
Trump is accused of trying to illegally change the results of the 2020 election and helping to start the riots at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, as Congress was getting ready to certify Joe Biden’s victory. The federal case against Trump has been put off until the U.S. Supreme Court decides on Trump’s claims of immunity. By late June, a decision might have been made, and the case probably wouldn’t go to trial before the election in November.
In a different federal case in Florida, Trump is accused of illegally keeping hundreds of classified documents after leaving office and refusing to hand them back when asked. This case has also been put off indefinitely because the judge in charge of it won’t set a trial date because of problems with a number of pre-trial motions that need to be resolved first.
A state case in Georgia that says Trump and his advisers broke the law by trying to change the results of the 2020 election there is also still on hold. Trump’s lawyers want prosecutor Fani Willis to be taken off the case, and prosecutors are appealing a decision that dropped three charges against Trump.
The only one that has gone to trial so far is the one in New York, and it’s likely to be the only one that is over before the election in November.
Now that a verdict has been reached, the case moves on to sentencing. There are a number of formal steps that must be taken before the sentencing phase can begin.
The case’s judge, State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, set the date of the sentencing for July 11.
Trump said he would go to court to fight the verdict after it was announced.
Trump said in front of the courthouse, “This was a disgrace.” “This trial was rigged by a cowardly judge with a bias.”
“We are going to fight for our charter.” He also said, “This is far from over.”
In order to make a recommendation for Trump’s sentencing hearing in July, the probation office will do a pre-sentencing investigation. During this investigation, they will look into Trump’s past and talk to victims, Trump’s family, and even Trump himself.
Pullano said that Trump’s lawyers can file a lot of motions during this time that could slow down the process.
Merchan will then decide on the sentence, which could be jail time, time spent in jail, or even a sentence that doesn’t include jail time.
Assuming Trump gets jail time, Pullano said he would probably try to appeal the verdict and sentence. Then, the appellate court could put off the sentencing until Trump’s lawyers’ problems are fixed.
“The appellate court could stay any sentence he might get, but there are no guarantees.” “It isn’t a right, but it does happen sometimes,” Pullano said. “They will be in charge of everything.”
With this verdict, Trump’s string of bad luck comes to an end. He had a lot of legal and financial problems before his third run for office.
At the last minute, an appellate court agreed to let Trump appeal a much smaller bond in a corporate fraud case in New York in March. This kept Trump from getting a potentially devastating $464 million verdict in court.
It was very likely that Trump’s properties would have been taken away by New York Attorney General Letitia James before that decision.
In the same month, Trump’s Trump Media & Technology Group DJT, +1.41%, which owns the social media site Truth Social, went public. It quickly became a popular meme stock, which caused its value to skyrocket and added billions to Trump’s wealth.
The money came at a time when he was significantly behind his opponent in campaign fundraising—current President Joe Biden—and he had to use a lot of it to pay his lawyers.
At first, it wasn’t clear how the verdict would affect the presidential campaign. However, Trump’s support has stayed strong throughout the trial. Most of the year, Trump has had a slight lead over Biden in the polls. Trump has also been able to use his legal problems to raise money for his campaign in the past.
