Why I’m more certain than ever that Donald Trump is going to prison

This week some readers have asked me why Palmer Report’s position has changed on whether Donald Trump is going to prison. The answer is simple: it hasn’t changed.

All along I’ve said that Trump would lose reelection (which he did), and then New York would indict him for financial crimes (which is underway), and then he’ll go to prison for it (which he will). Another Palmer Report writer, Robert Harrington, has taken the position all along that there are simply too many unprecedented aspects involved to be certain that Trump will end up in prison – a position that he reiterated in his column this week. The bottom line: no one’s position here at Palmer Report has changed on the issue.

Just so there’s no confusion, let me reiterate why I’m more certain than ever that Trump is going to prison. When New York prosecutors initially launched the criminal probe into Trump’s finances, they were going to end up indicting someone in the end. But Trump’s only hope would have been if prosecutors brought the initial round of indictments and then shut the probe down and called it a day. We now have confirmation that this didn’t happen.

Since the initial criminal indictments came down against the Trump Organization and Allen Weisselberg, New York prosecutors have continued to put witnesses in front of the grand jury. This means, essentially by definition, that more indictments are coming.

The fact that Matthew Calamari Jr testified this month means that either 1) he testified against his father Matthew Calamari Sr, who’s about to be indicted in the hope of flipping him against the Trump family, or 2) Calamari Jr agreed to testify because Calamari Sr is also planning to cooperate against the Trump family.

Either way, it’s now abundantly clear that the New York probe is going to culminate in a criminal indictment against Donald Trump. More specifically, it’ll be for the kind of financial crimes that no one beats. Yes, wealthy people get away with financial crimes all the time – but they do it by not being investigated or indicted to begin with. We’ve seen time and again that once you’ve actually been indicted for these kinds of straightforward financial crimes, you’re going to be convicted and you’re going to prison, no matter who you are.

Yes, there’s the fact that Donald Trump is a former President of the United States. And yes, there’s the possibility that Trump’s supporters will turn rabid once he’s arrested and convicted. But I see these as complete non-factors.

Trump will be put in prison by two groups, and two groups alone: 1) New York prosecutors, and 2) the trial jury. The prosecutors have pretty clearly already decided to go there, and they don’t care that Trump is a former President whose supporters might react with minor violence. And the only way the trial jury would acquit Trump on these kinds of crimes would be if a rogue Trump supporter managed to sneak onto the jury – but given the intensive screening and scrutiny that prospective jurors face, this is a highly unrealistic scenario.

Aside from the prosecutors and the jury, there’s no other entity who can just magically decide that Trump won’t go to prison because of this or that consideration. The media can’t do it. The Republican Party can’t do it. Trump’s supporters can’t do it. None of these groups have a magic lever they can pull that’ll open up a trap door in Trump’s prison cell. Nothing works that way, even though we suspect that at some point the media will try to scare you into staying tuned in by floating these laugh out loud scenarios as if they were real.

So yeah, Donald Trump is going to prison. Given the New York indictments that have come down, and the fact that the grand jury is gearing up to keep bringing indictments, Trump going to prison is much more of a certainty today than it was when he first left office.

Some have pointed out that, given Donald Trump’s age and visibly poor health, and the fact that his handlers think he’s in such bad shape they rarely allow him to appear in public these days, he could end up passing away before he’s arrested, tried, and convicted. But so be it. If Trump has to drop dead in order to avoid prison, then that’s not exactly a victory for him.