CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said if former President Donald Trump is re-elected, he won’t go to prison for any of the 91 charges against him.
A former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, Honig sat down with Mediatie editor-in-chief and host of “The Interview” podcast, Aidan McLaughlin, to discuss the four indictments against Trump. Should the GOP primary frontrunner get convicted on all charges, he would face 712 years behind bars.
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“Trump deserves to be indicted. Let’s start with that,” Honig told McLaughlin. “‘Is he going to actually go to prison?’ is a lot of people’s question.”
Honig, whose last book is titled, “Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It,” detailed what would have to happen for Trump to go to jail.
“He has to be convicted, which could well happen. I actually think it’s quite possible,” he explained. “Then he has to be sentenced to prison, which I think in any of those three cases [excluding the New York indictment] is likely.”
But all the liberal’s dreams of Trump in an orange jumpsuit go out the window if he is elected to a second term, according to Honig.
Then, though, if he wins the election, forget it,” he said. “If he wins the election, he’ll throw out the DOJ cases, he’ll pardon himself.”
As for the case in Georgia, if Trump is re-elected, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, being merely “a county-level prosecutor,” will not “be able to try him while he’s a sitting president.”
“That would be the same thing as if the Sussex County, New Jersey, prosecutor tried to put Joe Biden on trial right now,” he stated. “That would never happen.”
“I’ve heard people say, ‘’Well, constitutionally, we don’t know’ — I’m sorry,” he added. “My legal analysis on this one boils down to, ‘That ain’t happening.'”
If Trump wins in 2024, Honig restated, “The DOJ indictments get dismissed, and/or he’ll try to pardon himself.”
“We don’t know if that’s legal or not, but the problem is the only way to challenge a self-pardon is DOJ has to indict him and then litigate,” he stated. “It’s going to be his DOJ.”
As for trying Trump after he serves a second term, Honig said he won’t “hold my breath.”
“I guess theoretically he could be charged, he could be tried in New York and Georgia in 2029,” he said. “But, I mean, if that’s what we’re waiting for, you know, I’m not going to hold my breath. He’ll be 80-whatever, two, and the conduct will be a decade old.”
There is another potential scenario, Honig reasoned, that could see Trump escape jail time: President Biden could commute his sentence.
“People get so mad when I say this,” Honig said. “I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but there’s a possibility that he gets commutation from the federal indictments. There’s a possibility that a second-term, 84-, 85-year-old Joe Biden, says, ‘Not pardoning him. Conviction stands for history. But I don’t think we need him to go to prison. I beat him twice in an election. Let’s move on.'”
The Georgia case, however, is “more complicated,” Honig said, because, as a state case, “there’s no pardon in that,” making it “more problematic” for Trump.
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Honig also stated that Trump won’t “get locked up before the election, no matter what.”
“[E]ven if he gets convicted and then sentenced to prison all before the election,” he explained, “he will almost certainly get what we call bail pending appeal, meaning the judge will say you don’t have to start serving your time until you’ve exhausted and lost all your appeals.”
That process, according to Honig, even under expedited circumstances, would take a minimum of a year to 18 months to play out.
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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