Former United States President Donald Trump, found guilty on Thursday by a New York jury, said in an interview broadcast this Sunday that a prison sentence could be “a breaking point” for his followers.
In an interview with Fox News, the Republican presidential candidate in November warned that a prison sentence “would be difficult for the public to accept.” “You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point,” he said.
These statements have a particular connotation in a country still marked by the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters tried to prevent the certification of the electoral victory of his Democratic rival Joe Biden.
They also occur at a time when the 77-year-old billionaire businessman uses increasingly violent rhetoric against his opponents.
Adam Schiff, a Democrat in the House of Representatives and former member of the committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol, believes that Trump had a clear strategy and that this refers to that January 6.
“This is essentially his threat that if he is jailed, he will encourage his supporters to rise up” in protest, Schiff said Sunday on CNN’s State of Union morning show.
One of the former president’s sons, Eric Trump, estimated that the case was turning his father into “a martyr.”
“The American people are not stupid” and “they see exactly what is happening,” he said.
– “To jail” –
In her first reaction after Thursday’s historic verdict, Stormy Daniels, the former porn actress at the center of the case that led to Donald Trump being convicted of accounting fraud in a New York trial, called for him to be jailed.
“I think he should be sentenced to jail and some community service working for the underprivileged, or being a volunteer punching bag at a women’s shelter,” Daniels told Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper on Saturday.
After six weeks of trial in a Manhattan court, a jury found the former Republican president guilty on Thursday of 34 counts of falsifying accounting documents to hide a payment intended to silence the former actress, who claims that she had relations with the magnate, something that he denies.
Daniels, 45, claims he received a payment of $130,000 to avoid a sex scandal in the final stretch of the 2016 campaign that brought Trump to the White House.
The actress pointed out that Trump, the first former US president to be convicted by justice, “is completely and absolutely out of touch with reality.”
“Being in court was very intimidating for me, with the jurors looking at me,” said the woman who uses a stage name but is legally called Stephanie Clifford. “As I always said, I have been telling the truth all along.”
– “unfair” –
Trump called the process against him “unfair” and was released without bail after the hearing this week.
The former president (2017-2021) could be sentenced to four years in prison for each charge, when the judge announces the sentence, but according to experts, it is more likely that he will be sentenced to probation, since he has no criminal record.
Even so, he is not disqualified from continuing his electoral campaign, even in the unlikely event that he goes to jail.
US President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection in the November elections, criticized his future rival at the polls for questioning the US justice system and saying that his process was rigged, calling those statements “dangerous.”
But Trump also repeatedly refused to commit to accepting the result if he lost again to Biden.
– “This is not over for me” –
Daniels’ testimony was one of the most talked about moments of the trial, since the former actress told details of the sexual relationship she had with the magnate in 2006.
“This is not over for me. For me, this is never going to be over,” said the woman, who maintained that, even if Trump is found guilty, she has to live forever with this “legacy.”
Daniels stated in the interview that she feels “vindicated,” but also stressed that she will never be able to escape the death threats she receives from Trump supporters.
In the documentary “Stormy,” the former actress confessed that she is hurt by the constant insults she receives from Trump and his followers, but that she is more concerned about the threats.
“They are direct threats, like ‘I’m going to go to your house and I’m going to cut your throat’ or ‘your daughter must be euthanized.'”
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THE NATION
