In expansive new polling from YouGov and Yahoo! News providing a detailed look at Americans’ perspectives on former President Donald Trump’s recent legal troubles, 43 percent of general adults say that the ex-White House occupant should get prison time after his recent felony conviction in New York City.
Forty percent said that he should not get a prison sentence, while 17 percent said they were unsure.
Trump was convicted by a jury on all counts after prosecutors accused him of the felony falsification of business records related to hush money from before the 2016 election for a woman named Stormy Daniels. She allegedly had a sexual encounter with Trump some years before his successful campaign for president, and Trump was specifically accused of concealing what he was really doing with money provided to then-ally Michael Cohen: in part, repaying him for giving Daniels those funds, in connection to which Cohen himself was already prosecuted federally.
He was accused of campaign finance law violations on the idea that the hush money arrangements constituted a covert boost to the Trump campaign by (temporarily, it turned out) keeping Daniels’ story about Trump under wraps.
Both Daniels and Cohen testified during the trial, with the latter the evidently central witness brought forward by prosecutors. Trump is now heading towards a sentencing scheduled for next month, just before Republicans are set to kick off proceedings formally making him their party’s presidential nominee for the year. It appears that, based on precedent combined with controlling law, there’s technically a possibility of Trump’s sentencing going either way on the question of actual time in prison.
