Trump's sentencing is set for July, but he won't face consequences anytime soon, legal expert says
A jury found Donald Trump guilty of all 34 felony counts in his New York hush-money trial.
The judge scheduled Trump's sentencing hearing for July 11.
But a legal expert said it could take months, maybe over a year, for Trump to face any consequences.
A Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty of all 34 felony counts in the hush-money criminal trial concerning a clandestine payment made to the adult-film actor Stormy Daniels.
What comes next? Delays, delays, delays.
The judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, set Trump's sentencing hearing for July 11 at 11 a.m. ET.
In that hearing, Trump could face up to a four-year prison sentence for each count.
But don't expect Trump to face any of those consequences before the election.
Alex Reinert, an expert in criminal and constitutional law from Cardozo School of Law, told Business Insider it would probably be months, maybe even more than a year, before the former president needed to address them.
"I think we can expect months, a year, more than a year of potential delays," Reinert said. "It's hard to predict at the outset, but it's going to take some time."
The main reason for the expected delays is that Trump's defense team can appeal the jury's decision. And Reinert said there were several reasons they could seek to fight the verdict.
He said the attorneys could raise issues with Merchan's jury instructions, raise evidentiary issues, or challenge whether the Manhattan District Attorney's office attempted to use New York state law to prosecute a federal campaign violation.
"I don't know if any of these arguments will ultimately have merit, but I think these are all potential," he said.
Reinert said that an appeal, which could come after Trump's sentencing, would almost certainly pause any sentence, meaning Trump wouldn't have to face the consequences until the appeal was resolved.
He noted that plenty of people were sitting in prison waiting on the status of their appeals but said that was highly unlikely to happen given the nature of the crime and the defendant, a former and running president.
"I'd be shocked if that happens here," Reinert said. "Shocked because of who the defendant is, and I think there's a tendency to treat crimes like this differently than crimes of violence."
Correction: May 30, 2021 — An earlier version of this story misstated the date of Donald Trump's sentencing hearing. It's July 11, not July 10.
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