The lawyers have been saying that in the Georgia indictments, if convicted he has to serve a minimum of five years in prison per count and no pardon until after the time has been served. Dunno if mandatory time is required in a plea deal.
If so I can see him spinning it as I had to plea guilty to the false charges or the corrupt judges would have sent me to prison and I need to stay out so I can keep fighting for you! We all know I’m innocent.
I hope the plea bargain includes not telling lies on social media or in interviews.
I don’t believe that “don’t run for office” is a part of plea agreements. Introducing it for Trump would not just be strange, it would also serve as evidence that the goal of the prosecutors was something other than pursuing criminal actions.
Perhaps some of our resident lawyers can speak to this point: is a plea deal essentially just a contract that can include whatever terms and conditions the parties agree to, or are there things, like not running for office, that can’t be included?
Exactly. If such a thing ever happened, I’d expect and even support investigations and firings, potentially all the way up to Garland. And I’d be pissed, because it would mean Trump was right that the prosecution was a political witch hunt, which is bullshit because with the evidence in the indictments, it’s clear that he’s guilty of crimes.
Not that I’m worried. This is all paranoid speculation. None of that would actually happen.
How about some sort of prison sentence with a chance of quite early parole , provided he has good behavior and shows sufficient contrition for his actions. Noting that continuing to repeat the lies that got him there and attacking those who put him there will be used as evidence of lack of contrition.
A suburban Cleveland mayor resigned not too long as a result of a campaign-finance criminal case, and his plea agreement included the condition that he not run for any public office in the following four years IIRC. And there is the Agnew precedent, as noted above (see Rachel Maddow’s Bag Man for a very interesting account of that).
Cite? The Washington Post says, “Agnew resigned and accepted the plea deal under which he’d plead nolo contendere to one count of tax evasion and accept a $10,000 fine and three years of probation in return for no further prosecution.”
Here’s a gift link to a contemporaneous NYT article. It’s long, so scroll to the subheading that says Three Elements Cited. The first involves him submitting his resignation.
Judge Hoffman then cited the three elements of what he called the plea negotiations.”
“You are submitting your resignation as Vice President of the United States,” the judge began, Secondly, the Justice Department would waive further prosecution on other charges, “but this does not mean that your name may not be mentioned in proceedings against others,” the judge said. Nor did it mean that the State of Maryland “or some private organization” may not take future action against him, the judge said.
The Government can still file a civil action against Mr. Agnew, for example, to recover unpaid income taxes, plus penalties and interest, if he does not pay them. This would be in addition to his $10,000 fine.
“Do you understand and ratify the agreement as I have stated it?” the judge asked.
“I do so understand it,” Mr. Agnew replied.
Letter of Resignation
Mr. Topkis then rose to announce that “at 2:05 P.M. today, there was delivered to the Secretary of State in Washingtcn a letter from the defendant in which he submitted his resignation.”
I don’t see him doing a plea bargain deal of any kind. I believe he is counting on winning the presidency again, and has the idea that a sitting president can’t be imprisoned (or sanctioned in any meaningful way) for a state crime, even if the trial goes against him, which is far from certain. He’s probably also planning a way to run for and serve a third term of indeterminate length, probably under martial law or something.
Another thing he might be counting on is delaying the Georgia trial until there are enough of his supporters running the state that prosecution will be withdrawn.
In any case, he is the type of person who simply does not believe that he will not win in the end, by use of money or influence or blather, so he has no motive to accept a plea bargain. Then it will be too late.
