So Ben, you said that you think it's possible Trump could actually get jail time.

What

makes you say that? So

just looking at how other cases like his have been resolved, other falsifying business records cases, plenty of people have served jail time and have gone to Rikers Island and have had to serve weeks or months behind bars for this crime. Now, his case does stand alone. There is no other case that we're aware of for falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal. But there have been plenty of falsifying business records cases. And we're able to look at them and we're able to sort of see where these cases go. And I will also note that Judge Mershon is not someone to impose easy punishments, including for white collar offenses.

And how does Trump's case fit into all of this? Well,

he's a first-time offender. He's a senior citizen. He's been convicted of a crime that's a nonviolent crime. And so he has many arguments in his favor that he should not be incarcerated. On the other hand, he's also someone who behaved poorly in the judge's courtroom. He was subject to a gag order that he violated repeatedly. And he basically showed pretty broad disdain for the rule of law and the judge's authority. And so when you add those factors in, and you add in that he's shown no remorse for his crimes that he's been convicted of, I think you could have a judge who's just had to put up with months of Trump behaving badly in his courtroom to say, you know what, I'm drawing the line here and I'm sentencing this man to time behind bars. And when you say time behind bars, what kind

of time are we talking about then? We're

probably talking less than a year. We're probably talking weeks or months. And some of it could be part of his probation. But I don't think we're talking a long here. And I don't expect Donald Trump to end up on Rikers Island. I think he's more likely to be in a secure, safe facility with protection from the Secret Service. Okay,

so Ben, play this out with me. So the judge is now going to sentence after the election. Let's say Trump wins the election. What happens then? Like, are we talking about, you know, a president-elect serving jail time? I think

that's highly unlikely. I think that it's unworkable to have someone who's the president-elect also incarcerated. It would cause all kinds of political chaos. I mean, can you imagine him picking his cabinet while he's behind bars? It would be a real problematic situation. That's true. But I think if he were elected, I think what you would see is a delayed situation where even if he were sentenced on November 26th as planned, the judge would postpone the serving of that sentence until after his second term in office. Again, we've never had to deal with a situation like this. This judge has never had to deal with a situation like this. So we don't know exactly, but I would be stunned if the judge actually made him serve a single second behind bars while he was president elect. Ben,

can he pardon himself? I mean, if he does become president? I

think that there's a lot of questions whether he could pardon himself for the criminal cases he's been charged with federally. I think that in this particular case, which is a state case based out of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, there's no way he can pardon himself. This case is beyond the reach of the presidential pardon power because it is brought by a local district attorney's office.

Got it. Okay, so there's no way he can pardon himself. What happens if he loses? If

he loses the election, he will still try to appeal his conviction, and that might delay out his sentence even further, and he may not immediately have to go to jail or anything like that. But it would mean that his sentence would almost certainly be served sooner than if he had won. And so, obviously, he wants to win because he wants to be president. But one of the potential benefits to him of winning is that it keeps him out

of jail. Right. Ben, it's kind of incredible. You know, there have been so many cases against Trump that he's managed to delay for one reason or another. You know, the documents case, the election interference case. But this really seemed like the one that had finally caught up with him. Yet, here we are, where even after he was put on trial and found guilty of 34 felonies, he still managed to delay the consequences.

Exactly. And this was the one case that sort of dented that legal Teflon that he's built over decades, over a half century, to be honest. And for all the time that we hear, oh, Donald Trump is above the law and Donald Trump, the rules don't apply to him. This is why. This is why people feel that once again, he managed to escape some accountability. Now, I will say this. He will go into the election as the only former president and potentially future president to be a convicted felon. And that's not nothing. This is a case that Trump tried extensively to get delayed and to get thrown out, and yet it didn't. The jury, a jury of 12 New Yorkers, sat in judgment of him and pretty swiftly came back and concluded that he was guilty of the 34 felonies he was accused of. And there's no erasing that. And so I think that while there are these concerns and these laments that Trump is above the law, it's worth remembering that he is also still, at the end of the day, a felon.

Right. He's still a felon at the end of the day. But how and when he serves his potential time is very much up to voters, it seems, right? You know, it seems like a pretty rare thing. Like how many people get a delay on their possible four-year sentence based on how many people like them?

Exactly. Everything about Donald Trump's legal woes, everything about this case is unique. And there's no playbook for something like this. This is why I think it was such a challenging decision for the judge to make. There are no easy decisions in this case whatsoever. Now, I understand the concern that any kind of special accommodation for any defendant tarnishes that sense of fairness in the justice system. On the other hand, can you imagine if we had had a sentencing seven weeks before election day, potentially a sentencing to jail time. And if that outcome had moved the poles, had moved the needle in some way, then I think you could have had a judge feel remorse about that to be inserted into the election itself is kind of the opposite of how the justice system is supposed to work. And so I understand everyone's concern, at the end of the day, this judge was just not going to have himself be a potentially deciding factor in a presidential election. Thanks so much.