Former president Donald Trump's lifestyle would be turned on its head if Judge Juan Merchan handed down a sentence that includes incarceration, according to one prison expert.
The Daily Beast recently interviewed Sam Mangel, who was sentenced to 60 months behind bars for financial crimes in 2020 and now works as a prison consultant. He told the outlet that even if Trump were to get special considerations in prison as a senior citizen and a former president, daily life behind bars would still be extremely unpleasant for him.
"When you’re in prison, I don’t care who you are, you’re a number," Mangel said. "You’re told when to get up, when to eat, when to go to sleep. And it’s humiliating, it’s degrading."
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"Inside you get up at six in the morning, you go to your meals as dictated, you get the same phone time, the same lights out at four o’clock in the afternoon, you have to stand next to your bed for count,” he continued. “So it is a humiliating situation. And especially for somebody like the former president."
According to Mangel, inmates are awaken suddenly and loudly at 6 AM and forced to stand in front of their cell for the daily roll call. Inmates are only allowed 15 minutes per day for phone calls, emails have character limits and take more than an hour to send and all convicts have to work a job in the prison. He added that no matter a person's status on the outside world, guards tend to treat everyone the same.
"It doesn’t matter whether you’re an executive or a politician. It doesn’t matter that you’re used to unfettered phone access… You’re a president. Why should you have more than the next guy?" Mangel said.
As a prison expert, Mangel is often hired by white-collar clients to help them prepare for their incarceration between their guilty verdict and their sentence. One of his current clients is former Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro, who is currently serving a four-month federal prison sentence for contempt of Congress. He told the Beast that even though New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said that a wing of the Rikers Island prison would be prepared in the event Trump is given a jail sentence, actually incarcerating Trump would be a logistical "nightmare." He said Trump should be allowed to serve his sentence at a military base, which he viewed as more secure than a prison and able to accommodate the logistics of housing both the former president and his permanent Secret Service detail.
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"If he has to be incarcerated, there are places that can handle it more appropriately and in a more professional, protected manner than a Bureau of Prisons or department of corrections facility," Mangel said.
Whether Trump serves a prison sentence will be up to Judge Merchan, who has final discretion about whether the ex-president will see the inside of a cell. While each of the 34 felony counts Trump was found guilty of carry a maximum sentence of four years, the maximum sentence Trump could get under New York state law would be 20 years when he appears for his July 11 sentencing hearing.
Merchan could also impose a lighter sentence of probation or home confinement, since class E felonies don't require incarceration, and since Trump is a 77-yer-old first-time offender. However, Merchan's level of leniency will likely depend on the former president's level of remorse and respect for the courts. Former defendants Merchan has sentenced told the Daily Beast that the level of severity of their sentence was wholly dependent on those two factors. Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told MSNBC that Trump's 10 violations of Merchan's gag order could be what results in Merchan opting for prison.
Click here to read the Beast's report in full (subscription required).
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