French: Let’s end with some lightning round questions. First, since the trial has started, in your view has the chance of conviction gone up or down?
Roiphe: Up.
White: Up significantly.
Interesting article. This point bothers me the most, because I feel it’s so true deeply in my bones. When discussing Trump’s team potentially losing the trial but winning political points, they say:
Practically, the appeals process will inevitably take time, and I doubt if Trump wins the election, he would be sent to state prison. So maybe in the long run, it’s not a terrible miscalculation.
I feel like even a guilty verdict still does not mean Trump will ever see consequences.
It would be completely up to Merchan. If Trump is convicted in NY, and sentenced to prison, the judge determines if he must stay in prison until the appeal process is complete.
Interesting. As much as Trump has been trying to paint Merchan as totally corrupt, he’s actually shown significantly more leeway than I think he would show any other defendant. When it came to the contempt charges, he specifically stated that he didn’t want to jail Trump because he was a former president and current candidate. With that in mind, I would be shocked if he chooses to jail Trump during the appeals process.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
David French, a Times columnist, hosted a written online conversation with Rebecca Roiphe, a former assistant district attorney in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and Ken White, a former federal prosecutor, to discuss Donald Trump’s Manhattan trial and Michael Cohen’s testimony.
In that sense, I suspect Team Trump is happy that he’s getting lots of airtime to push his narrative that he’s a victim of the elites and that the trial doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact on his polling numbers.
Readers may recall that to secure a conviction for a felony, the prosecution doesn’t just have to prove that Trump falsified business records but that he did so in furtherance of another crime.
French: My understanding is that the defense wasn’t necessarily planning on calling a large number of witnesses, and I certainly don’t expect Trump to testify.
Roiphe: Practically, the appeals process will inevitably take time, and I doubt if Trump wins the election, he would be sent to state prison.
The smart play here, for instance, would have been to say it doesn’t matter whether or not he had a relationship with Stormy Daniels, because that renders big chunks of the case irrelevant.
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