The U.S. Secret Service protects the president whether he is in the Oval Office or visiting a foreign war zone. But protecting a former president in prison? Such a scenario has never happened before, and that would be the challenge if Donald Trump is sentenced to prison during his criminal trial in New York. After all, according to the law, the secret service must protect him 24 hours a day.
Even before the opening statements of this trial, the Secret Service was somewhat prepared for the rare possibility of a former president ending up behind bars. Prosecutors have asked the judge in the case to remind Trump that attacks on witnesses and jurors could land him in jail even before a verdict is delivered.
The judge held a hearing Tuesday morning to determine whether Trump was guilty of contempt by violating a gag order. He is likely to issue a warning or impose a fine before taking the extreme step of sending the 77-year-old ex-president to prison. It is not immediately clear when the judge would rule on this.
At the prosecutor’s request, federal, state and city officials held an impromptu meeting last week about how to handle the situation. That’s what two people involved say.
According to those people, that behind-the-scenes conversation involved Secret Service officials as well as other relevant law enforcement agencies. The conversation focused solely on how to move and protect Trump if the judge orders him to be briefly held in a cell in the courthouse for contempt.
The much bigger challenge, however, is how to safely incarcerate a former president if the jury convicts Donald Trump and the judge gives him a prison sentence instead of house arrest or a suspended sentence. That issue has not yet been discussed, according to some of the dozens of current and former city, state and federal government officials interviewed for this article.
This is partly because it is almost certain that if Trump is ultimately convicted, there will be a long and hard-fought appeals process, possibly all the way to the US Supreme Court. That would likely delay a possible conviction by months or even longer, several people say, noting that a prison sentence is unlikely.
But the challenge remains enormous. Not only for the Secret Service and prison staff, who would have to brave a logistical nightmare to safely lock up Trump, probably also the Republican presidential candidate.
“This is clearly uncharted territory,” said Martin Horn, who has worked at the highest levels in New York and Pennsylvania state prisons and has been commissioner of New York City’s correctional and probation departments. “No state prison system has had to deal with this before, nor has any federal prison.”
Firearms in prison
Steven Cheung, communications director for Trump’s election campaign, said the case against the former president is “so false and so weak” that other prosecutors had declined to bring it. He calls the trial “an unprecedented partisan witch hunt.”
“That the Democratic fever dream of jailing the Republican Party nominee has reached this level exposes their Stalinist roots and shows their utter contempt for American democracy,” he said.
Protecting Trump in a prison environment would mean keeping him separate from other inmates and having his food and other personal items screened, officials say. If he were locked up, a group of officers would be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In a rotation system, they will take turns in and out of the facility, several officials say. And although firearms are of course strictly prohibited in prisons, those officers would still be armed.
Several state and city prisons in New York are currently closed or partially closed, leaving wings or large portions of the facilities empty and available, according to former prison officials. One of those buildings could be used to lock up the former president and house his Secret Service guards.
No grace
Anthony Guglielmi, spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, declined in a statement to discuss specific “protection operations.” But he says Secret Service agents are required by federal law to protect former presidents, using the latest technology, intelligence and tactics.
Thomas Mailey, spokesman for the New York state prison system, said his department cannot speculate on how it would treat someone who has not yet been convicted. However, there is a system “to assess and meet the medical, mental health and safety needs of individuals”. Frank Dwyer, spokesman for the New York City jail, said only that “the department would find suitable housing” for the former president.
The Manhattan trial, one of four criminal cases pending against Trump and possibly the only one that a jury will hear before the election, centers on allegations that he falsified documents to cover up a sex scandal involving a porn actress. The former president is charged with 34 counts of falsifying company documents. If convicted, the judge in the case, Juan Merchan, could sentence him to sentences ranging from probation to four years in a state prison. However, such a punishment for someone of Trump’s age who is being convicted for the first time would be extreme.
If Trump is convicted but re-elected president, he cannot pardon himself because it is the state of New York that initiated the prosecution.
‘City time’ or ‘state time’
Under normal circumstances, a sentence of one year or less would be common parlance ‘city time’ are served on New York City’s infamous Rikers Island, where the Department of Corrections has seven prisons. Trump’s former financial director Allen Weisselberg (76) is also serving his second five-month sentence there for crimes related to work for his former boss.
Any sentence of more than one year, also known as ‘state time’would generally be served in one of the 44 prisons operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
The former president could also be sentenced to a suspended sentence, raising the bizarre possibility that the country’s former commander-in-chief will have to regularly report to a city probation officer.
Trump would then have to follow the probation officer’s instructions and answer questions about his work and private life until his probation expires. He would also be banned from associating with indecent people and if he committed any more crimes, he could be jailed immediately.
© The New York Times
