Donald Trump is still facing a possible term behind bars for 34 felony convictions in New York — and a former Manhattan prosecutor thinks winning the election is his last shot at avoiding it.
The former president has successfully delayed his sentencing, now scheduled for Nov. 26, for his convictions for falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election by covering up a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. A judge is scheduled to decide a week after Election Day how the Supreme Court's immunity ruling will impact the case, reported CNN.
“It’s 50/50” that he gets sentenced in November, said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former top official at the Manhattan district attorney’s office and a CNN legal analyst.
“If he loses the election, I think he gets sentenced, and I think he gets sentenced to prison. If he wins, I don’t think this goes forward.”
Effectively, winning a second term as president would be “his get out of jail free card," Agnifilo said.
Trump is the first former president to be criminally prosecuted, and he was also indicted in Georgia and the District of Columbia on charges involving election interference. Federal charges in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case were dismissed by Florida-based Judge Aileen Cannon.
"If you look at what the this election means for Donald Trump," said CNN reporter Kara Scannell, "it's obviously the potential presidency, but it also could make the difference between whether he serves any time in jail and most specifically, you know, whether he gets sentenced is going to have an impact on any of his criminal cases. There are still several outstanding, but the sentencing is the one that's most urgent and could mean the difference between being behind bars and being a free man."
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"Now, a lot of lawyers and retired judges I spoke to say that they think this will really turn on it because if Donald Trump wins the election, then it means that he's going to have a road map of legal challenges that he will try to pursue," she added.
New York Justice Juan Merchan, who oversaw the Manhattan criminal case, will rule Nov. 12 on Trump's motion to dismiss his conviction in light of the Supreme Court's immunity ruling, which came just over a month after a jury found him guilty in the hush money case.
"If he rules in favor of Trump it's over, that's the end of it," Scannell said. "If he rules against Trump, then his lawyers are going to launch a series of challenges, because the distance between that decision on the 12th and his scheduled sentencing date is two weeks. So they will be asking every judge – that judge, Merchan, appeals courts, maybe even up to the Supreme Court, to stop the sentencing so they can challenge that other legal challenges that they're working on to try to move this case from state court into federal court."
"Also, just in general, they're going to be challenging this conviction," she added. "So if Trump is the president-elect, you might see some of these courts agree that he shouldn't be sentenced, he's going to be taking over the country. That would be a distraction.
"But if he's not the president-elect, then a lot of lawyers think that his sentencing day will come. It may not be two weeks after that decision, it could get delayed, you know, just a couple of months. But they do think he could be sentenced in this case within the next six months."
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