If Trump goes to prison, the Secret Service will go there too

The U.S. Secret Service’s mission is to protect the president, whether he’s inside the Oval Office or visiting a foreign war zone.

But protecting a former president in prison? The prospect is unprecedented. That would be the challenge if Donald Trump – whom the agency is required by law to protect 24 hours a day – were convicted at his criminal trial in Manhattan and sentenced to prison.

Even before the trial’s opening statements, the Secret Service was to some extent anticipating the extraordinary possibility that a former president would be behind bars. Prosecutors had asked the judge overseeing the case to remind Trump that attacks on witnesses and jurors could land him in jail before a verdict is even reached.

Last week, at the prosecution’s request, officials from federal, state and city agencies had an impromptu meeting about how to handle the situation, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

That behind-the-scenes conversation — involving Secret Service officials and other law enforcement agencies — focused solely on how to move and protect Trump if the judge ordered him briefly jailed for contempt in a cell detention from a courthouse, the sources said. .

The much bigger challenge – how to safely incarcerate a former president if the jury finds him guilty and the judge sentences him to prison rather than home confinement or probation – has yet to be addressed directly , according to a dozen former and current city residents, state and federal officials interviewed for this article.

This is partly because if Trump is ultimately convicted, a series of drawn-out, hard-fought appeals, perhaps all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, is almost a certainty. That would most likely delay any sentencing for months or more, said several people, who noted that a prison sentence was unlikely.

But the daunting challenge remains. And not just for Secret Service and prison officials, who would face the logistical nightmare of safely incarcerating Trump, who is also the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

“Obviously, this is uncharted territory,” said Martin F. Horn, who has worked at the highest levels of state prison agencies in New York and Pennsylvania and served as commissioner of Corrections and Probation of the New York City. “Certainly no state prison system has faced this problem before, and no federal prison has had to either.” »

Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign communications director, said the case against the former president was “so spurious and so weak” that other prosecutors declined to pursue it, and called it a “hunt for unprecedented partisan witches.”

“The fact that Democratic fever dreams of incarcerating the Republican Party candidate have reached this level reveals their Stalinist roots and shows their complete contempt for American democracy,” he said.

Protecting Trump in a prison environment would involve keeping him separated from other inmates, as well as controlling his food and other personal items, officials said. If he were to be imprisoned, a number of officers would work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, rotating in and out of the facility, several officials said. Although firearms are obviously strictly prohibited in prisons, the officers would nevertheless be armed.

Former prison officials said several New York state and city prisons have been closed or partially closed, leaving wings or large portions of their facilities empty and available. One of these buildings could be used to incarcerate the former president and house his Secret Service protection agents.

Anthony Guglielmi, the Secret Service spokesman in Washington, declined in a statement to discuss specific “protective operations.” But he said federal law requires Secret Service agents to protect former presidents, adding that they use cutting-edge technology, intelligence and tactics to do so.

Thomas J. Mailey, a spokesman for the New York State Corrections Agency, said his department could not speculate on how it would treat a person who has not yet been sentenced, but that it has a system “to assess and provide medical, mental health and safety needs.” Frank Dwyer, a spokesman for the New York City Prisons Agency, said only that “the department would find appropriate housing” for the former president.

The Manhattan trial, one of four pending criminal cases against Trump and perhaps the only one that will go to a jury before the election, focuses on accusations that he falsified records to cover up a sex scandal involving a porn actor. The former president is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records. If convicted, the judge in the case, Juan M. Merchan, could sentence him to sentences ranging from probation to four years in state prison, although for a first-time offender the age of Trump, such a sentence would be extreme.

If Trump is convicted, but re-elected president, he will not be able to pardon himself because the prosecution was brought by the state of New York.

Under normal circumstances, any sentence of a year or less, colloquially known as “city time,” would typically be served on New York’s notorious Rikers Island, home to the Department of Correction’s seven prisons. (That’s where Trump’s former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, 76, is serving his second five-month sentence for crimes related to his work for his former boss.)

Any sentence of more than a year, known as state time, would typically be served in one of 44 prisons operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

The former president could also be sentenced to probation, raising the odd possibility that the former commander in chief regularly reports to an official in the city’s probation department.

He should follow the probation officer’s instructions and answer questions about his work and personal life until the end of the probation period. He would also be prohibited from associating with unsavory people, and if he committed further crimes he could be immediately imprisoned.

This article was originally published in the New York Times.