Trump's fate now relies heavily on his ability to charm a 'city civil servant': report

With former President Donald Trump now convicted on 34 felony counts of falsification of business records and facing sentencing by Judge Juan Merchan on July 11, his task becomes convincing the court to let him off with probation and fines rather than a prison term.

To do that, Politico reported, there is a new person Trump will have to convince — his probation officer.

"In a typical case, a convict will be interviewed by a probation officer in the days after the verdict and be given the opportunity to accept responsibility and present mitigating factors that could reduce any sentence," Politico reported.

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"That is going to be difficult for a man who has constantly railed against the case against him — not to mention the very judge who will decide the sentence."

In a typical case, a convicted defendant will have to meet with a probation officer within 10 days — and former New York City Department of Probation commissioner Kevin Horn walked Politico through how the process will work.

When Trump has the interview, it will take the form of, "Sitting in an office across a desk from a probation officer, a city civil servant, who does these things day in and day out ... There’s a social history of the defendant: birth, family, family background, marriage, then a recitation of what the defendant has been convicted of, a recitation and a review with the individual of any prior criminal history."

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The idea is to give the court as much information as possible on the defendant in an attempt to figure out if they are "amenable to supervision."

This is, of course, no ordinary case, as Trump is a presidential candidate as well as a former president, with Secret Service protection and monitoring all the time.

Ultimately, when that report goes to Merchan, concluded Horn, "The judge has to weigh the interests of justice. One of the purposes of the sentence is to deter others from committing the same offense. It has to satisfy the community that justice has been done. There are a lot of considerations."

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