The 24 Seven: Sentencing Guidelines Edition
24sight News' twice weekly newsletter collecting the seven most important stories shaping the race for the White House
1 Singular narrative
Campaigns are built on stories and for almost a decade the Republican nominee, former president Donald Trump, has benefited from a multitude of mini-scandals (generally pushed by him and his team) that have clouded his image.
But after a jury of 12 New Yorkers read off the guilty verdicts, one by one, last week, there is now a singular narrative around Trump: he’s the first former president convicted of a crime — in this case 34 felonies for falsifying business records.
This is much akin to the Trump-Russia investigations which rattled Trump for years, revealing Russia’s rampant efforts to support him in 2016.
For more on this, the wise
, dissected the early impacts of the verdict — which is still being processed by a checked-out electorate — and landed on this: “The verdict amounts to sounding the bell in a plodding prize fight.”(24sight’s Tom LoBianco – your cruise director on today’s newsletter – discussed some of this dynamic over the weekend on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.)
2 One week in July
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in New York on Thursday, July 11, 2024. He’s scheduled to formally accept the GOP nomination for president a few days later in Milwaukee.
There remains an incredible amount of uncertainty about whether Trump will serve jail time for his conviction. (More on that up next.) A handful of Republicans, notably former Trump stalwart Mo Brooks, have said the party should replace Trump as the party’s nominee — which is easy to do mechanically, but far less so politically.
Some practical political considerations hover over this latest historic moment, including when and how Trump will roll out his pick for running mate. At the same point eight years ago, Trump offered the job to then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on the Wednesday before the GOP convention and announced it the Friday before the convention.
In related news, Indiana’s top legal officer, state attorney general Todd Rokita, was endorsed by Trump Tuesday and said he was honored to receive the endorsement.
3 Jail time?
Swirling questions surround this historic moment, with competing interpretations of whether Trump will be the first former president to go to jail.
On the one hand legal experts have said that white-collar crimes, with no prior offenses, rarely lead to jail time for defendants, as Reuters reports. But they have also noted that Trump’s circumstances — hiding the sex-related payoff to Stormy Daniels to help him win the 2016 election — add an entirely different dimension to this issue. (The maximum penalty is four years in prison.)
One possible corollary from Trump’s own orbit, his longtime family accountant and family company chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, was sentenced to five months in jail earlier this year for lying under oath — despite having no prior convictions.
Another clear factor is Trump’s behavior throughout the trial, from appearing to sleep through stretches of testimony to verbally attacking prosecutors, witnesses and even the presiding judge.
In the lead-up to the Manhattan trial and throughout the trial itself, Trump repeatedly attacked Judge Juan Merchan and his family — spurring first the imposition of a gag order and then a nominal fine, $9,000 per New York law, for violating that initial gag order. Trump kept up his attacks through the trial, and legal experts have noted that Merchan, who declined to enforce the gag order further, could apply fines or more at final sentencing.
4 Political violence
The resurgence of political violence has been one of the defining attributes of the Trump era of American politics. From Trump encouraging his supporters to imprison his opponents to some of those supporters, in extreme cases, attacking others: running a Biden campaign bus off the road in 2020 and, of course, attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to wrongly keep Trump in office.
That rage visibly died down after the 2022 midterms — in which Trump’s wildest adherents, including failed GOP candidates Kari Lake to Herschel Walker — lost big races across the country. Trump’s routine court appearances throughout the 2024 campaign have been notable as much for their historic nature as the lack of massive protests or throngs of supporters.
But that dynamic may be changing. Reuters has a surprising investigation into the resurrection of white nationalist militia group The Proud Boys, who helped direct the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, along with similarly-minded Oath Keepers and other extremists.
The militia’s previous leader, Enrique Tarrio, was sentenced to 22 years in prison last year for his role helping direct the deadly attack on Congress. And Trump’s top supporters have been teasing a return of violence as the November election fast approaches. Top Trump ally and Florida political scion Rep. Matt Gaetz recycled Trump’s famous October 2020 instructions to the militia group last month, writing on social media that he was “Standing back and standing by.”
5 Spin city
The Trump campaign and his MAGA allies insist that his criminal conviction helps him with voters. And there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that the conviction has lured some skeptical donors off back into the fold.
But as in all things politics, watch the actions — not the words.
Trump and his team are fighting the conviction, appealing it, and arguing that there will be grave retribution against all perceived enemies if he gets back in power. They have not, however, printed the criminal finding on T-shirts, mugs or other campaign paraphernalia like they did with his criminal mugshot taken in the Georgia criminal conspiracy case.
dissected this dynamic at Letters from an American.
6 The Biden trial
A Trump-appointed judge is overseeing the criminal case against the Democratic president’s eldest son by a Trump-appointed prosecutor. That president, Joe Biden, has said to let the process play out.
A jury was seated in Delaware this week in the criminal case, against Hunter Biden, on charges that he was a drug-user when bought a gun — which could carry up to 25 years in prison if a jury finds him guilty. Hunter Biden’s defense team, led by superlawyer Abbe Lowell, has argued that the president’s son was clearly not using drugs when he bought the gun.
7 About Time
Biden gave a rare interview to a mainstream media outlet, Time Magazine, and it’s filled with some revealing comments — including a statement which for decades has been taken as granted, “We are the world power.”
In the seriously/literally department, it’s worth noting how he seems to make wild or inaccurate statements — much the same way as Trump, either by skipping over words or seemingly mistaking names and people.
Read more on that dynamic from
JV Last
Also read
rundown of the most important lines from the interview
Of note, Time has been cranking this campaign cycle.
Recall its big interviews with Trump from April, in which the embattled GOP leader hinted there may be retribution against Democrats if he wins a second term.