Americans split on whether Trump should go to jail in Stormy Daniels case

Americans are nearly equally split on whether or not former President Donald Trump should be imprisoned over the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, according to a new poll.

Slightly more people, 40%, think Trump shouldn’t go to jail, compared to 39% who say he should, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll released Monday. The difference between the two groups is well within the margin of error. Another 20% say they’re not sure. Though 9,720 people were polled via telephone and the web, only 4,842 chose to answer this specific question. The margin of error on the full sample is 1.3%, though it goes up to approximately 1.9% for the reduced sample size on this particular question.

After being convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records, whether or not Trump will go to prison for the crime has been hotly debated. It’s up to New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who is scheduled to sentence Trump on November 26, delayed from the initial date of September 18. Trump could be put on probation, or even given a suspended sentence—which means he would still be guilty, but not be sent to jail at that time.

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Neama Rahmani, former federal prosecutor and president of the West Coast Trial Lawyers firm in California, says the non-jail options are most likely. He said in an interview with Newsweek that Merchan appears reticent to jail Trump, as he declined to do so when Trump violated his gag order 10 times. Rahmani also pointed out the difficulty with jailing a former president.

“Incarceration with Secret Service protection is even less likely and a logistical nightmare,” he said.

Regardless of sentencing, Trump is likely to appeal, and likely to be free while the appeal winds its way through the courts, according to the New York Times. And in fact, on Monday, Trump’s lawyers argued to delay the sentencing further, as his team attempts to get the case sent to federal court, Newsweek reported.

There is at least one person who is arguing for Trump to be sent to jail: Stormy Daniels herself. In June, she told the UK tabloid the Mirror, how she’d like to see Trump sentenced.

“I think he should be sentenced to jail and some community service working for the less fortunate, or being the volunteer punching bag at a women’s shelter,” she said.

“I don’t know what the sentencing could be or what Trump will even understand. It’s like when you have a child, and sometimes you take the electronics away from them, but if your child is very artistic, they don’t. They don’t care. They’ll just go colour their colouring books, and then you have another child that, you know, they don’t want to go outside. You gotta ground them or like take away electronics or don’t let them have dessert. You have to find the punishment that not just matches the crime, but is fair and just, and that impacts that particular person. Who knows what that is with Trump,” Daniels added.