Convicted felon and former President Donald Trump spent less than 30 minutes answering routine questions in his virtual pre-sentencing interview.
The 45th president's court-mandates question-and-answer session lasted “less than a half-hour of routine and uneventful questions and answers," The Associated Press, citing an anonymous source, reported.
The results of the interview are expected to help form a report arranged by a New York City probation officer. It will then be used to inform Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan's decision when he is expected to sentence Trump on all 34 counts of falsifying business records on July 11 — four days before the three-day Republican National Convention is set to begin.
Want more breaking political news? Click for the latest headlines at Raw Story.
Trump has proclaimed his innocence and promised to appeal the conviction.
That report may be sweeping in its detail of Trump's conviction, his social, family and employment background, as well as his education and economic status. It would remain confidential unless the judge authorizes its release.
Trump remains the presumptive Republican nominee to rival President Joe Biden for the White House come the Nov. 5 election.
Besides granting Trump the unusual luxury of conducting the interview remotely through Zoom, the former president was next to his attorney, Todd Blanche, New York City Mayor Eric Adams told The Daily Beast.
Former New York City Department of Corrections and Probation commish Martin Horn called the format "highly unusual."
In an interview with The Beast, Horn described pre-sentencing meetings such as the one Trump completed areas more often held in- person, and which give the probation officer autonomy to ask probing questions about a convict’s life.
Complicating his case has been the fury Trump has unleashed on the judge who could decide whether he goes to prison or manages to be spared of it.
At one point Trump called Merchan the "devil."
"There's never been a more conflicted judge," Trump said of Merchan, complaining about the "thousands of dollars" he was told to pay in fines for flouting his gag order 10 times.
He claimed that the gag order was assigned by someone "who couldn't put two sentences together."
"He looks so nice and soft," Trump said of Merchan. "He looks like an angel, but he's actually a devil."
