Former U.S. President Donald Trump says he can cope with possibly being imprisoned after being convicted of illegally trying to influence the outcome of the 2016 election that he won but is “not sure the public would stand for it.”
Trump told “Fox and Friends Weekend” in a taped interview that aired Sunday, “I think it would be tough for the public to take. You know at a certain point, there's a breaking point." He did not expand on his thought of how the public might react.
Trump reflected on the conclusion of the first-ever criminal trial of an American president, saying, “It was a tough ending.”
Even as he is the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate in the November election against President Joe Biden, the Democrat who defeated him in the 2020 election, Trump faces the possibility of being placed on probation or sentenced up to four years in prison.
Trump attorney Will Scharf told ABC’s “This Week” show, “I don’t think President Trump is going to end up being subject to any sentence whatsoever.” He said Trump’s legal team is willing to appeal the verdict “all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to vindicate President Trump’s rights.”
Trump’s sentencing is set for July 11, just days ahead of the start of the Republican National Convention where the party faithful plans to nominate him as the party’s standard bearer for the third straight election cycle.
Trump, 77, said that in “many ways” he thought the trial was “tougher on my family” than himself, lamenting the effect on his wife, former first lady Melania Trump, who did not, unlike three of his adult children, attend any of the court sessions. Some of the most pointed testimony focused on two women and their claims of sexual relations with Trump a decade before the 2016 election, liaisons he denied.
“She’s fine,” Trump said of wife. “I think it’s hard for her [that she] has to listen to all this stuff. She has to read all this crap.”
He said of the prosecutors in the case: “They did this to create havoc … all these salacious names. These are bad people. They’re sick.”
“And I’m not even allowed to defend myself because of the gag order,” he claimed even though he declined to testify in his own defense, as was his choice to make.
Trump was not prohibited from attacking the charges against him or New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan but was blocked in a gag order from assailing the witnesses against him, including two of the key people who testified at length, former Trump political fixer Michael Cohen and porn film star Stormy Daniels.
“How can you have a witness like so and so and I’m not allowed to mention his name?” Trump said of Cohen.
Merchan ruled that Trump violated the gag order, holding him in contempt of court 10 times and fining him $10,000.
After hearing five weeks of testimony, a New York jury last week convicted Trump of ordering Cohen to pay $130,000 in hush money just before the 2016 election to Daniels to silence her claim that she had a one-night tryst with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament. Testimony earlier in the trial showed that the grocery store tabloid National Enquirer paid $150,000 to Playboy model Karen McDougal to bury her claim of a monthslong affair with Trump although she was not called as a witness in the case.
The hush money deal with Daniels was not illegal, but after two days of deliberations, a New York jury convicted Trump of all 34 felony charges he faced that he hid the 2017 reimbursement to Cohen for the hush money by labeling it in his corporate records at the Trump Organization as money to pay Cohen for his legal work.
Cohen testified that Trump twice approved the reimbursement scheme, including once in a White House meeting shortly after Trump assumed the presidency in early 2017.
“I paid a legal expense, and they say it’s a charge,” Trump said, continuing the defense he made throughout the trial even though the jury rejected his contention.
Trump’s defense assailed Cohen as a serial liar not to be believed.
Cohen is a convicted perjurer who also pleaded guilty to tax fraud and a campaign finance violation linked to the hush money payment. He served 13½ months in a federal prison and subsequently has turned into a critic of Trump and testified that he hoped he would be convicted.
In the Fox interview, Trump continued to attack the charges against him and said he would appeal the verdict.
He also complained that the trial was heard in New York City, which voted overwhelmingly against him in both 2016 and 2020 and where Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans.
“You had a jury from a certain persuasion,” Trump said, although both his lawyers and prosecutors vetted the backgrounds of the 12 jurors before they were seated to hear the case.
A long-time Trump critic, House Representative Adam Schiff, told CNN’s “State of the Union” show Sunday, “If you don’t want to be tried in front of a New York jury, then maybe don’t commit so many crimes in New York City. It’s pretty simple.”
Trump claimed the case was coordinated by the Biden White House although Trump has provided no evidence of that. The case was filed against Trump by New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg, a Democrat but not a federal law enforcement official.
