Former President Donald Trump’s new status as a convicted felon has many questioning whether he will be able to vote in his home state of Florida this November.
On May 30, a Manhattan jury plunged the nation into uncharted waters when it found President Trump guilty of falsifying business records to conceal another crime, which is a felony in New York.
“If a Floridian’s voting rights are restored in the state of conviction, they are restored under Florida law,” Blair Bowie of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center said, noting that people are often confused by the state’s rules.
In New York, felons can vote upon their release from incarceration, regardless of whether they have completed the other terms of their sentence. Felons who have not been incarcerated remain eligible to vote.
Contentious Relationship
The sentencing decision will be up to the discretion of New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who will take into account President Trump’s criminal record—he has no prior history—and other factors, such as his personal history and the conviction itself.
Throughout the trial, President Trump frequently railed against Justice Merchan, holding that he was partisan and steeped in conflicts of interest. And even after the verdict, he has kept up that criticism.
“We have a judge who’s highly conflicted,” he told reporters at a May 31 press conference at Trump Tower in New York.
“You know what the conflict is. Nobody wants to write about it, and I’m not allowed to talk about it. If I do, he said I'd get put in jail.”
Justice Merchan has donated to Democrat candidates and causes in the past, including President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. Meanwhile, the judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, runs a progressive political consulting firm that boasts President Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign as a client.
President Trump was already under a sweeping gag order when he learned about Ms. Merchan’s ties to his political opponent. But when he began to speak out about that new piece of information, Justice Merchan added his family members to the list of people the candidate was barred from discussing.
During the trial, President Trump was fined $9,000 for violating the gag order.
The gag order remains in place for now, but the former president said he hoped others would speak out about the alleged unfairness of the situation on his behalf.
He went on to confirm that he would appeal the conviction.
Sentencing and Appeal
President Trump’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for July 11—just days before he is slated to become the GOP’s official presidential nominee.The former president was convicted on 34 counts, each carrying a maximum prison sentence of four years. He would likely serve those terms concurrently, however, resulting in up to four years’ total imprisonment.
Still, the judge could issue a lighter sentence of probation or conditional discharge—an outcome California attorney Neama Rahmani said he thought was more likely.
“Judge Merchan showed his reluctance to jail Trump when he violated the gag order 10 times,” Mr. Rahmani told The Epoch Times. He also noted that the crime in question is a class E felony, the lowest level in New York.
Still, other legal experts have said they think the conviction will be reversed on appeal.
“Judge Merchan’s instructions to the jury were very favorable,” said John Malcolm, vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
He noted that the jurors were told that they did not have to unanimously agree on what underlying crime President Trump was allegedly trying to conceal by falsifying records.
Mr. Malcolm also said the former president’s defense attorneys were “severely limited” in what evidence they could present, while the prosecution’s witnesses were permitted to testify to “all sorts of salacious, extraneous, and prejudicial material.”
“These are just a few of the myriad issues that Donald Trump will raise on appeal, and it would not surprise me if this conviction is ultimately overturned,” he said. “But that is unlikely to happen until after the election.”
