Donald Trump had a fresh, defiant message for American voters on Sunday: “34 rigged felony convictions won’t stop me”, he thundered in a breakfast time fund-raising email sent to his supporters. “I’m on a mission to save America!”
But the mere fact that he felt moved to affirm that his presidential campaign remains fully on track offers a fresh window into the growing anxiety of Trump insiders about the uncertain, final impact of the guilty verdicts handed down by the jury in Manhattan last Thursday.
Trump’s email was dispatched just hours after the political website Axios revealed fresh polling numbers that suggest the consequences could be more substantial than the former president’s team had anticipated. Forty-nine per cent of independent voters told pollsters they now think Trump should drop out of the presidential race. Even 15 per cent of Republicans agreed that the guilty verdicts should lead Trump to abandon his quest to get his old job back.
The poll is by no means definitive, and far more detailed data will be required before it is possible to tell just how many of those wavering independent voters – key to both Trump and Joe Biden’s hopes of winning November’s election – reside in the all-important battleground states. But the headline numbers alone indicate that more than half the electorate approves of the jury’s decision to convict Trump of the falsification of business records, and will come as deeply unwelcome news to his campaign.
There could be much more of that ahead, given that Trump must now wait six agonising weeks before learning of the sentence that Judge Juan Merchan intends to impose upon him. Most legal analysts argued throughout the trial that as a first-time offender, a prison sentence was the least likely outcome for Trump, even if the jury convicted him of the full slate of charges that he faced. For the first time the former president’s lawyers are now expressing nervousness about the possibility of a custodial sentence being handed down by Merchan on 11 July.
“On the one hand, it would be extraordinary to send a 77-year-old to prison for a case like this”, Trump’s lead attorney Todd Blanche told the Associated Press on Saturday. He called the notion of a jail sentence for an offender with no prior convictions “almost unheard of” in cases similar to those brought against Trump.
But Merchan has form that worries Trump’s legal team. Last year, he imposed a five-month jail sentence against Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of The Trump Organisation. Like the former president, Weisselberg was a first-time offender, although the judge may have viewed his convictions for tax fraud and conspiracy as more serious crimes than the falsification of business records for which Trump has now been convicted.
Blanche predicted “a very…contentious sentencing where we’re going to obviously argue strenuously for a non-incarceratory sentence”. But even that process leaves Trump at the judge’s mercy until a mere four days before the Republican National Convention is due to begin in Milwaukee on 15 July, the event at which Trump will officially become the Republican Party’s standard-bearer this November.
Before sentencing can occur, fresh ignominies lie ahead for the former president. He will be required to attend a psychological evaluation at New York City’s Department of Probation, at which Trump – protected by his retinue of Secret Service officers – will face questions about his personal history and mental health.
Any failure by the former president to express remorse for his conduct will count against him in the pre-sentencing report that is presented to Merchan. The judge is also likely to take into account Trump’s demeanour throughout the trial, and his furious, ongoing social media attacks against prosecutors, members of Merchan’s family, and the courthouse staff.
While Trump on Friday insisted that “this is long from over”, even his efforts to appeal his conviction are constrained by earlier rulings handed down by Merchan. The appeals process itself is expected to last years, meaning Trump will be campaigning for the presidency as a convicted felon, even if his efforts to overturn the jury’s verdict are under way by November.
Trump will be watching closely in the days ahead to see whether any senior Republican withdraws their endorsement of his campaign. No significant figure has yet put their head above that parapet, and the loyalty of grassroots Republican supporters may continue to cement Trump in place as the party’s presidential candidate, despite the risk that even for a short time he may end up campaigning from a jail cell.