Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has stated that Donald Trump would ‘absolutely’ have gone to prison if he lost the 2024 presidential election.
While appearing on Fox News’ Hang Out with Sean Hannity podcast, the former prosecutor spoke with the TV presenter — who is known for his pro-Trump coverage — about the president’s 34 felony convictions.
He suggested winning the presidency for the second time likely changed Trump’s fate dramatically.
Hannity said: ‘[Trump] was convicted on 34 felony charges. So, is it an accurate statement to say, “He either wins in 2024, wins the White House — it’s either the White House or the big house?”‘
The ‘big house’ is an American slang term that means prison or a penitentiary.
Without hesitation, Blanche responded: ‘Yes. I mean, oh yeah, absolutely.’
The Attorney General, who led Trump’s defense team in the infamous Stormy Daniels hush money trial, added: ‘He had a D.C. case breathing down his neck. He had the Florida case, which had been dismissed, but they were appealing it.
‘And then he had a judge in New York. There’s no scenario in which he wasn’t going to send President Trump to prison, and he didn’t after the president won.’
Back in 2024 — three years after Trump’s first presidency — he was convicted of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels.
The American adult film actress and director claimed that she and Trump had sex, and that she accepted $130,000 from the president’s former lawyer before the 2016 presidential election in exchange for her silence about the alleged affair.
Trump, who was 77 at the time, became the first former US president to be tried for a crime, which led to his 34 counts of fraud charges.
However, Trump was granted an unconditional discharge by the judge. This is a court sentence in which a defendant is found guilty of a minor offense, but the judge decides that no punishment, further supervision, or fines are necessary.
Still, it cemented Trump’s status as a convicted felon.
Meanwhile, Hannity questioned whether Trump would have faced federal prosecution had he not ran for a second presidential campaign.
He put to Blanche: ‘If he had decided not to run, all of this, none of this would have happened.’
The Attorney General then replied: ‘Without a doubt. And those smug prosecutors would say, “Oh no, this has nothing to do with the fact that he’s running.” All right. Yeah, you should work on that in the mirror.’
Alongside his convictions, Trump was also impeached during his first term as president. The impeachment made him the third US president to be impeached by the House of Representatives, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998.
However, Trump is the only US president and only federal official to have been impeached twice. In each case, he was acquitted on all counts by the Senate.
The first was in December 2019. Just one week before Christmas, the House voted to impeach Trump over allegations that he sought help from Ukraine to boost his chances of re-election.
Trump was accused of breaking the law by pressuring the newly elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to find damaging information regarding Joe Biden, his political rival, who eventually won the presidency in 2020.
Democrats responded by saying it is illegal to request help from foreign entities to win a US election.
The second was in January 2021, when an article of impeachment was launched against Trump that charged him with ‘incitement of insurrection’, linked to the January 6 Capitol riots.
In a video, Trump asked supporters to ‘peacefully and patriotically’ make their voices heard. However, he also told them to ‘fight like hell’ after he said the election had been falsely stolen from him.
After his speech, many broke into the Capitol and the building was placed on lockdown. Five people died during the incident.
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