TJ O’SULLIVAN: Former President Donald Trump has been convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records. With this historic verdict comes many questions.
PATRICK SMITH: Syracuse law professor Professor Gregory Germain joins us now to give us his insight on the case. Thanks so much for joining us today.
GREGORY GERMAIN: Pleasure to be here.
SMITH: So first question up. Can you kind of give us your opinion on this whole case and how it went about?
GERMAIN: Well, it was, in my opinion, is it was a very political case for the district attorney to bring. It was, it’s an extremely complicated legal case that, that the district attorney didn’t plead in a way that was clear to the defendant what he was being charged with, exactly what he was being charged with. So they charged him with falsifying, you know, business records by hiding the hush money payment, the reimbursement of the hush money payment that Michael Cohen made. But the statute says, you know, that, that the business records must be falsified to defraud and the district attorney didn’t say, well, who is being defrauded? How was it? How was how is there fraud here? And secondly, they have to show that it was, to commit a separate independent crime. And the district attorney didn’t initially indicate what the separate and independent crime was. So, you know, you’re being charged with defrauding and committing a crime, but we’re not going to tell you what those are, you know, so we’ll see what the you know what what happens at trial and, and ultimately they obtain the conviction based on jury instructions that, you know, had a lot of legal problems with them that we’re probably going to see covered on appeal.
O’SULLIVAN: Now, question for you in regards to the way that this trial sort of came out and, you know, Trump was saying there’s there’s no crime. But now he’s been convicted. Could the former president face jail time heading into election season?
GERMAIN: Well, he definitely faces jail time. The statute says that the normal penalty for a class felony is an indeterminate sentence of 1 to 4 years. But for a first time offender, the judge can give a definite sentence of less than a year. And the tradition in New York, in class E felonies for first time nonviolent offenders is to give probation. So I would expect that the sentence recommendation that’s given to the judge will be probation, but it’s completely up to the judge whether the judge wants to send him to prison immediately, wants to give him a sentence of 1 to 4 years, which would be stayed pending appeal or would just give probation. And so there’s a lot of discretion in the judge.
O’SULLIVAN: Well, a lot to wait for as we await Trump’s sentencing. But thank you so much, professor, for joining us and giving us your insight.
GERMAIN: You’re welcome.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC NEWS) – Syracuse University law professor Gregory Germain provided some insight on the guilty verdict in former President Donald Trump’s trial in New York City.
Germain explained what happens next in the criminal proceedings, including the range of possibilities for Trump’s sentencing.
