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Former President Donald Trump has been indicted three times, and faces 78 felony charges. Most recently he pled not guilty to allegations of unlawfully interfering with the 2020 presidential election results. In a fundraising email, Trump said he could be jailed for 561 years, although some experts suggest this estimate might even be conservative.
Straight Arrow News contributor David Pakman explains the calculations behind the numbers and fears that the former president might evade incarceration altogether.
If Trump were to take a plea agreement, it is very common that prosecutors will say, “Listen, we’ve got 30 charges,” for example, “plead guilty to four, we’ll get rid of the other 26. But here’s the punishment you’re gonna have to accept on the four,” this sort of thing. So 561, for that reason, is simply not going to happen.
There’s another aspect to this as well. Rarely are defendants sentenced to the absolute maximum on every charge. Usually, it’s something in the middle. Not always the case, but that’s also an issue. So after you get rid of some charges, or plea some away, or whatever the case may be, then you’re not usually going to get the maximum on every single count.
And then further, you rarely serve all counts consecutively. Typically, there is a concurrent nature. If you get sentenced to four years on one count and five years on another count, you’re not often serving them consecutively, meaning nine years, but you’re sort of chipping away at both of them simultaneously — not always, depends on state versus federal. When it’s state, it depends on which state.
If you put all of that together, where do we land? We land on — in the most extreme case where Trump is hit in every single one of these cases with something — it’s going to be a number that is a tiny fraction of 561 years — many legal experts are saying it would be under 40 at the absolute most.
