Kristy Greenberg, a legal analyst for MSNBC, is predicting that the recent felony conviction of former President Donald Trump by a New York City jury will remain intact even after the widely criticized U.S. Supreme Court decision giving presidents a layer of legal immunity for certain actions in office.
The conviction came after prosecutors accused Trump of the felony falsification of business records tied to hush money from before the 2016 presidential election for a woman named Stormy Daniels, who herself testified at trial. The Supreme Court decision was in response to a Trump appeal challenging a different criminal case accusing him of conspiring against the 2020 presidential election outcome, meaning Joe Biden’s win that year, but Trump’s team is seeking to apply the decision elsewhere. It covers actions within a president’s legal role.
“I believe Trump’s guilty verdict will stand despite the SCOTUS decision. His conduct was personal: he directed his personal lawyer to make hush money payments to a porn star and then covered it up by signing personal checks. No immunity for personal conduct. And Trump already tried to make this argument and the court properly rejected it because it was untimely,” Greenberg wrote this week on social media.
In the meantime, Trump’s sentencing in the case, which was originally scheduled for this month, was postponed to September, allowing for the court to grapple with arguments at hand.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who’s also a legal analyst these days, said that the timing would make it extremely difficult for Trump to potentially appeal any sentence all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court before November’s election in which he’s still set to participate. Trump could receive jail-time if his sentencing does eventually move forward, but the precise consequences he would face remain unclear. The judge already threatened Trump with time in jail in the context of a gag order that remains partially active.
