Donald Trump: Will he go to prison?

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On June 13, Donald Trump was charged with multiple crimes for the second time in less than three months.

He surrendered to authorities in Miami on 37 federal charges stemming from his alleged illegal retention of national defense information, adding another criminal charge to the legal pressure against the twice-impeached former president as he seeks to win his party’s nomination in next years Republican presidential primary.

The Florida federal judge overseeing the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice case against Mr Trump has rejected the disgraced ex-president’s bid to delay his trial until after the 2024 election.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon issued an order on July 21 requesting the governments to set an expedited trial date and schedule for pre-trial motions, with a start date of 20 May 2024.

Prosecutors with the office of Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith have asked him to set a trial date of December 2023, four months after the August date that was put on the courts’ calendar shortly after Mr Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta first appeared in a Miami courtroom to answer a 38-count indictment charging the former president and Nauta with illegal information to defend him, and Mr . violations of justice.

Mr Trump has also been criminally indicted in New York in connection with hush money payments to bury stories of his alleged activities in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

He is also at the center of another broad investigation by the US Department of Justice special counsel into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that is separate from the investigation in Atlanta into his attempts to deny the results of the election in Georgia.

If he is convicted on any of those charges, speculation has grown over whether he will face prison time, raising the prospect of federal prosecutors and judges weighing whether to jail a presidential candidate or potential winner in the 2024 race.

Among the charges in the federal case surrounding his alleged mishandling of classified documents are knowingly withholding national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document from a federal investigation, a scheme to conceal, and false statements and representations.

Each charge carries a maximum sentence of five years to 20 years. A potential sentence, if convicted, could include decades in prison.

That indictment was Mr Trump’s second. In March, he appeared in a New York City courtroom to face criminal charges following Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Braggs’ investigation into hush money leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

He pleaded not guilty to both charges. And after two hearings, he returned to his properties to deliver speeches to crowds of supporters to cast himself as a victim of political persecution, baselessly accusing his political rivals of hindering his chances of winning the 2024 presidential election.

Former US President Donald Trump waves from his car following his meeting with Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. United States Federal Courthouse, in Miami, Florida, on June 13, 2023

(AFP via Getty Images)

Following his federal indictment, Mr Trump has declared himself an innocent man.

Those charges stem from a case that began early last year after National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) officials discovered more than 100 classified documents in boxes recovered from Mr Trumps Palm Beach, Florida residence.

That discovery led NARA officials to notify the Justice Department which began an investigation into how the documents ended up in Mr Trump’s estate.

Throughout the investigation, prosecutors and investigators have raised concerns that the former president was dishonest if he returned any and all classified documents in his possession to government custody as required under the Presidential Records Act.

But the type of records in question has added another wrinkle to the dispute between Mr Trump and the government he led from January 2017 to January 2021.

Trump stopped by the Versailles restaurant after his arrest and arraignment

(Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

At times, the former president claimed he used broad classification and declassification authority to declassify any records he brought to his Palm Beach home at Mar-a-Lago.

No evidence has emerged that any such order was ever issued, and in audio recordings obtained by prosecutors, Mr Trump is said to have acknowledged that he failed to declare some records in his possession long after his authority to possess them had expired.

The Justice Department is likely to seek to imprison Mr Trump if he is convicted.

National security lawyer and George Washington University law professor Kel McClanahan said the department likely wants Mr Trump to go to jail, according to Insider.

Mr McClanahan said the evidence in the indictment sought to show that Mr Trump was a kingpin who knowingly broke the law, endangered national security, endangered nuclear weapons security, [and] national security is threatened abroad.

The consensus among most legal experts who have commented on the indictment is that Mr Trump appears to be in serious legal danger.

A former assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York, Sarah Krissoff, said that until there is a conviction here, the Department of Justice will want to seek a real sentence because of the type of behavior, how long it lasted, his involvement, the involvement of other people, allegedly working at Trump’s direction.

He noted that if Mr Trump is convicted, the verdict will depend on the judge, who appears to be Trump-appointee Aileen Cannon in the District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Mr McClanahan noted the novelty of possibly finding the right way to imprison a former president.

He asked how the authorities could lock up a man with a Secret Service detail and with national security secrets running through his brain, that if someone held a shiv to his neck, hell reveal the location of our missile bases.

In this handout photo provided by the US Department of Justice, stacks of boxes are seen in the White and Gold Ballroom of former US President Donald Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida

(Getty Images)

He added that Mr Trump could become a foreign intelligence gold mine for most countries in the world if he were imprisoned. Mr McClanahan sees it as more likely that if Mr Trump is convicted, he will be sentenced to house arrest with an ankle monitor.

But Ms Krissoff told the outlet that Trump could share that information in his head whether he was incarcerated or not. So I’m not particularly concerned that, as a citizen, incarceration will trigger the sharing of information that wouldn’t be shared otherwise.

Fox News legal commentator Jonathan Turley also didn’t hold back after the indictment was unsealed.

Mr Turley, the Shapiro Chair of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, told Fox News it was a very damaging indictment.

There are accusatives that are sometimes called narrative or speaking accusatives. These are indictments that are really meant to highlight the depth of the evidence, there are some accusations that are just bare bones, he added.

This was not one of those charges, Mr Turley said.

This is clearly an indictment made to answer those questions. It is very detailed, he said. The Trump team shouldn’t fool itself. It hits below the waterline. These are witnesses who appear to have testified under oath [and] gave statements to federal investigators, both of whom could be criminally charged, if they were false.

Speaking about photos from Mar-a-Lago of boxes of documents found in a ballroom and bathroom, in addition to other less-than-ideal areas, Mr Turley said it was clearly a mishandling.

It’s hard to show a picture of these boxes surrounding a toilet and say we’re really responsible, he added. Note that each of these numbers comes with a large sentence potential.

A photo published by the US Justice Department in its charging document against former Trump shows boxes of documents stored in a bathroom at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida

(Department of Justice via REUTERS)

The Justice Department, meanwhile, is separately investigating Mr Trump’s denial of the 2020 results, based on years of work from federal prosecutors to investigate more than 1,000 people in connection with the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, fueled by former presidents who have consistently claimed the election was rigged against him.

Based on evidence uncovered by a House select committee that investigated the events surrounding the attack as well as other filings and reports, prosecutors are likely probing several key elements of a massive effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Those could include Mr Trump’s election lies, his campaign attempts to pressure state officials and push false voter records to block the certification of the results, a failed attempt to persuade Mr Pence to reject the result, and Mr Trump’s failure to prevent a mob of his supporters from entering the Capitol.

A targeted letter from federal prosecutors to Mr Trump indicating he is the subject of an investigation cites three laws the former president may have broken in his attempts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.

A charge of obstruction of an official proceeding has been filed against hundreds of people in connection with the attack on the Capitol.

The House select committee and a federal judge involved in cases stemming from its inquiry argued there was evidence Mr Trump sought to corruptly obstruct the certification of electoral college votes in Congress, a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

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