If one is being objective and not paying attention to his former job or publicity, he’s a first time offender convicted of non-violent offenses with a business footprint that makes him low risk for probation violation.
He would also place a burden on the penal system if incarcerated, and his current state of having round the clock law enforcement presence further lowers the likelihood that he goes to prison.
On the flip side, he has done a lot to actively antagonize the person who will be mostly in charge of his fate, and he’s got a good month to build a body of evidence that says he’ll immediately disrespect probation.
So almost certainly not, but it’s not as close to zero as you would expect for a former president.
Cohen got prison time for the same exact crime, also a first offense. To my mind, being a former president should make them hold to to a higher standard, not a lesser one.
Cohen was convicted of tax evasion, bank fraud, and campaign finance crimes. Trump was not charged with any of these. So not the same crimes.
I don’t recall hearing a lot of evidence that Trump conspired with Cohen to evade Cohen’s income taxes, or to lie to Cohen’s bank.
I don’t think Trump is capable of making illegal campaign contributions to his own campaign. There are no limits on self funding an election campaign in this country.
Trump was convicted of campaign finance crimes, from the same incident though.
What about the risk of recidivism though?
Pretty clear that he will do exactly the same thing again.
That’s fair. Being openly remorseless does tend to encourage the judge to give the full extent of what they’re allowed to do.
I’m just cynical about anyone wanting to be the first person to sentence a former president to prison, and maybe finding any possible reasonable way to skirt over that for whatever reason or just “the good of the country”, justice or not.
Or not, and they’ll just seize the opportunity to show that justice is blind.
We’ll find out in July. 😊
Prisons, on paper, have a responsibility to ensure a degree of prisoner safety. The level of effort required to give a former president that safety is beyond what even a white collar criminal oriented prison is going to be able to easily provide without disruption. For example, who would be preparing his food? How many guards would have access to him while he slept?
It’s possible to do, but it’s the sort of thing that could factor into the decision.
