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MANHATTAN (CN) — Early Wednesday morning in West Palm Beach, Florida, soon-to-be Vice President JD Vance celebrated Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential win by calling it “the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America.”
Trump had plenty to overcome to get back into the White House, even as his race against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris was considered a coin flip by most pollsters.
In the past year alone, the 78-year-old Republican was hit with a $480 million civil fraud judgment; lost an $83 million civil verdict against writer E. Jean Carroll for raping and defaming her; and became a convicted felon when a Manhattan jury found him guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a salacious hush money scheme from 2016.
But Trump’s presidential victory could make it easier for him to evade responsibility, at least with his most pressing legal issue: his upcoming sentencing for criminal charges in New York.
In June, a jury of 12 Manhattanites made Trump the first-ever U.S. president to be convicted of a crime when they found he falsified checks, invoices and ledger entries to conceal hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, who was threatening to upend Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign by publicly revealing that she had sex with the married billionaire a decade prior.
After much delay, Trump is finally due to be sentenced in the case on Nov. 26. The already dubious odds of New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan giving Trump jail time for the felonies, one criminal defense attorney said, are even lower now that Trump has won the presidency.
“I always thought he wasn’t going to incarcerate Trump,” said Jeffrey Evan Gold the New Jersey-based Helmer, Conley & Kasselman. He noted Trump’s lack of a prior criminal history.
“Now, he is the president, so I think it’s even less likely that he’ll be incarcerated. It’s just human nature,” Gold told Courthouse News.
Even if Merchan were to impose jail time against Trump, Gold acknowledged that Trump’s seemingly endless appetite for litigation will allow him to move appeals through higher and higher New York state courts until he can bring a federal question to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“He’s got a lot of buddies up there,” Gold said.
This would make it effectively impossible for a meaningful sentence to be enforced against Trump until after he leaves the White House in four years. By then, he will be 82 years old.
“You can delay the execution of these criminal sentences for quite some time,” New York City criminal defense attorney Ron Kuby said Wednesday. “My record is eight years.”
Kuby pointed out that Trump’s bountiful resources, coupled with New York’s liberal cash bail laws, meant Trump wasn’t expected to spend time behind bars in any case. Still, it’s an unprecedented situation.
“We’ve never had a sitting president waiting under a criminal sentence,” Kuby said.
The issue could be moot by this time next week: On Tuesday, Merchan is expected to rule on whether the trial evidence violates the Supreme Court’s recent ruling for broad presidential immunity. While unlikely, he could vacate Trump’s conviction altogether.
As for Trump’s civil cases in New York — his fraud judgment and the verdict in the Carroll case — Trump will still be liable for the money he owes, despite his status as the future 47th president.
“His election doesn’t have any real role in the civil cases,” Gold said.
Carroll’s attorney Robbie Kaplan echoed that sentiment.
“Mr. Trump’s election to the presidency does nothing to change either the fact, as determined by two separate juries, that he sexually assaulted and defamed Ms. Carroll, or the applicable legal principles under which he was held liable for that conduct,” Kaplan told Courthouse News on Wednesday.
In fact, Trump has been in this situation before. During his first presidential term, a judge forced him to pay $2 million as part of a settlement over the misuse of Trump Foundation funds.
Trump is on the hook for far more in this pair of newer civil cases. He’s currently appealing them both; the civil fraud judgment was argued last month in a mid-level New York appellate court, while the Carroll verdict is in the Second Circuit.
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