Yeah, Donald Trump is still going to prison
Donald Trump has decided that, because his own handpicked toady William Barr has released a phony pro-Trump “summary” of the Mueller report, it means Trump is innocent and everyone who investigated him was trying to frame him. Trump is taking this to such a mentally deranged extreme, he’s seeking vengeance against those who exposed his crimes. But Trump might want to try coming back to reality for a moment, because his reality still absolutely 100% involves prison bars.
For starters, we no longer have any reason to believe Barr’s assertion that the Mueller probe isn’t bringing any more criminal indictments. The DOJ revealed in court proceedings last week that Mueller’s federal grand jury is still “continuing robustly.” Someone at the DOJ has inherited the Mueller grand jury, and intends to do something with it. Under the law, the only reason for a grand jury to still exist is to bring more indictments.
Maybe Barr can shut that Mueller grand jury process down before it results in additional indictments and maybe he can’t, but in a way it doesn’t matter, because Barr only has control over federal proceedings. Earlier this month we saw a District Attorney in New York bring state level charges against Paul Manafort just minutes after the federal case against him was concluded. That means New York already had indictments in place against Manafort, and simply waited until the right time to unseal them.
Does anyone really think New York isn’t planning to indict Donald Trump for his state level crimes? After all, he’s confessed to several of them in plain sight. It’s coming. There’s nothing that says New York can’t indict Trump while he’s still in office. We’ll then get into some interesting scenarios regarding trial proceedings and such. But the bottom line is he’ll all but certainly be convicted on at least some of the charges against him, because the publicly available evidence alone is so rock solid.
From there we’ll see what happens. Indictments and/or convictions aside, New York State may not be able to physically put Donald Trump into a jail cell until he’s no longer occupying the office of President of the United States. But his current term ends in under two years, and if he does seek reelection, he’s about twenty points upside down in that effort. So yeah, Trump could be in state prison in as little as two years – but the point is that he’s absolutely heading there eventually. Unless he cuts a resignation deal that includes state charges, there’s only one way this ends for him: behind bars.
