Former President Donald Trump will remain free before sentencing after being convicted Thursday by a New York jury on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover a $130,000 payment made by disgraced former attorney Michael Cohen to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.
Trump, the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a felony, also won't face any travel restrictions until his July 11 sentencing, Michael Bachner, a former prosecutor and longtime defense attorney, told the New York Post.
Trump, who has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and claims the prosecution was a political witch hunt, faces a minimum sentence of probation and a maximum of four years in prison.
Because Trump most likely won't be sentenced to jail – he had no prior convictions – prosecutors wouldn't seek to jail him ahead of his sentencing, and a judge wouldn't likely grant such a request anyway, Bachner said.
"He will not be remanded," Bachner said. "There is no requirement that the judge remand him and I would be shocked if the judge were to remand him even if [prosecutors] asked for it."
Bachner told the Post because "there is a very decent chance [Trump is] looking at a probationary sentence, it would be unnecessary punishment to incarcerate somebody who very likely isn't getting a jail sentence."
Before his sentencing, Trump will have to meet with the probation department to go over his history and then prosecutors and Trump's attorneys will file their sentencing recommendations to Judge Juan Merchan.
Prosecutors haven't said what penalty they will seek but it's possible they won't ask for jail time because Trump was convicted of a nonviolent crime, and he has no prior convictions. Either way, Trump's legal team most certainly will ask for a probationary sentence, Bachner said.
Bachner told the Post if Trump were sentenced to jail time, he would probably remain free pending an appeal.
"To the extent there is a reversal on the appeal by the time Trump's appeal is decided, he would have already done his jail time so it would just be unfair to incarcerate him," he said.
Regarding an appeal, Trump's legal team will most likely seek to have Merchan set aside the verdict, and if that's rejected, this will set off at least a year's worth of appeals by Trump's side, the Post reported.
And if Trump loses an appeal with the midlevel state appeals court, he likely will seek to have the state's highest court hear his case, which could take another additional year.
"An appeal could easily take a year or longer after the sentencing," defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman, who represented drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, among other notable clients, told the Post.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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