Former President Donald Trump suggested on Sunday that he is prepared to face prison after he was found guilty in New York on Thursday on 34 counts of falsifying his business records.
Trump and his allies have decried the case as baseless and politically motivated, but the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate indicated on Sunday that he is “okay with” the possibility of being jailed.
Interviewing the former president on Sunday, Fox News host Pete Hegseth asked Trump about the likelihood that he will be sentenced to house arrest or jail time at his July 11 sentencing.
“I’m okay with it,” Trump replied. “I saw one of my lawyers the other day on television saying, ‘Oh no, you don’t want to do that to the president.’ I said you don’t beg for anything. It’s just the way it is.”
The New York case against Trump centered around payments he made to enforce a 2016 nondisclosure agreement to prevent adult film star Stephanie Clifford (who goes by Stormy Daniels) from publicly claiming they had an extramarital encounter. Trump classified the payments for this nondisclosure contract, arranged by his former lawyer Michael Cohen, as “legal expenses,” but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office argued that the description was inaccurate.
In most cases in New York, falsifying business records would be considered a misdemeanor offense; however, it can be elevated to a felony offense if it was done to conceal another crime. In this case, Bragg’s office argued that the nondisclosure payments were made to help Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and that his alleged mischaracterized payments constituted an effort to hide a donation to his campaign without disclosing it.
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Trump and his allies have indicated that they will appeal Thursday’s conviction and may even take their complaints before the U.S. Supreme Court. However, the former president’s comments to Fox News on Sunday indicate he is prepared for some level of punishment no matter how the case is resolved.
At another point in the interview, Trump said that “in many ways” the case is tougher on his family and friends than it is on him.
“I have a wonderful wife who has to listen to this stuff all the time. They do that for this reason. They do that, all these salacious names that they put in of these people,” Trump said. “And I’m not even allowed to defend myself because of a gag order, but they put this stuff in to create havoc.”
The former president added, “In many ways, it’s tougher on my family than it is on me.”
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