This morning I asked why the fuck we’re putting up with Trump. The first question back was the obvious one. He’s a convicted felon, so there have to be consequences, right? Where’s the jail? If the laws in that post were enforced on him the way they get enforced on you, what would he get?
On paper, a lot of years. In practice, zero days, and every one of those zero days has a reason. This post is the reasons.
Same rules as last time. If something is verified by several outlets, I state it flat. If it’s one outlet’s reporting, I name the outlet. If it’s an allegation, I tell you whose. If nobody knows, I say that. This one needs one more. A statutory maximum is the most a judge may impose after a conviction, not a prediction; first offenders rarely get the top number. Apart from the one case a jury has already decided, nothing below is a charge against Trump or anyone else. It’s what the statute says, who says it fits, and who has actually done the time.
34 felonies, zero days
On 30 May 2024 a Manhattan jury convicted Donald Trump on all 34 counts of first-degree falsifying business records, a class E felony under New York Penal Law §175.10. Each count carries up to four years. Stack all 34 and you get 136 years on paper, but New York’s §70.30 caps consecutive terms like these at 20. Twenty years was the legal ceiling. Commentators treated four as the realistic one.
On 10 January 2025 he was sentenced by video from Mar-a-Lago. The hearing took, per AP, “little more than half an hour.” The sentence was an unconditional discharge: no jail, no fine, no probation. The conviction stands. Even the prosecution asked for that sentence, given the calendar. Judge Merchan said the protections of the office “do not reduce the seriousness of the crime,” and that “one power they do not provide is the power to erase a jury verdict.” Then he said: “Sir, I wish you Godspeed as you assume your second term in office.”
The only money Trump has paid in any criminal case is $10,000 in contempt fines for violating the gag order in his own trial ten times. He was warned about jail and never jailed.
Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to eight counts, including campaign-finance crimes over the same hush-money payments. Prosecutors said he acted “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump. He got three years, a $50,000 fine, $1.4 million in restitution and $500,000 in forfeiture, and he was disbarred. He spent about 13 months in prison and roughly 30 months in custody in all.
Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s CFO, went to Rikers twice, five months each time. His first plea, in 2022, included falsifying business records, the same crime Trump was later convicted of. The Trump Organization itself was convicted on 17 counts in December 2022 and fined about $1.6 million.
The fixer did prison, the CFO did Rikers, and the company paid. The man at the top got Godspeed.
Then there’s what a felony costs everyone else afterward. About 4 million Americans can’t vote because of one. Trump can, because New York only bars voting while you’re in prison. A felon caught with a gun faces up to 15 years. Prison or probation can cost you your passport, per AP; he travels on a diplomatic one. And nothing in federal law stops a felon from becoming president.
The conviction is on appeal in state court. On 28 August, Judge Hellerstein refused for a third time to move the case into federal court, per NBC New York, Axios and CNBC, and Trump appealed to the Second Circuit within hours. A presidential pardon cannot touch this conviction. Only New York’s governor can.
The four walls
Everything else in part one runs into at least one of four walls.
Wall one: immunity. In Trump v. United States the Court held that a president is “absolutely immune” for acts within his “conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” and has “at least presumptive immunity” for all his official acts. Roberts added: “The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts.” Then comes the part people miss. Even in a case about unofficial acts, prosecutors can’t use “testimony or private records of the President or his advisers” probing an official act. Justice Sotomayor laid it out in dissent: “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”
Wall two: DOJ policy. A 2000 Office of Legal Counsel opinion says indicting a sitting president “would unconstitutionally undermine” the executive branch. No federal charge until he’s out.
Wall three: who prosecutes. The Attorney General is Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, confirmed 50–49 in August. NOTUS reports that the Public Integrity Section, the unit that prosecutes corrupt officials, went from 36 lawyers to 2.
Wall four: the pardon. It covers every federal offense, criminal contempt included. Can he pardon himself? DOJ’s own 1974 memo says no: “no one may be a judge in his own case.” No court has ever ruled on it.
The sentence sheet
Ten acts from part one. For each: who says which law it touches, the maximum checked against the statute text, who actually did time for the same kind of thing, and why none of it has reached him.
1. The hush-money records (a jury convicted him)
The law: NY Penal Law §175.10. Up to 4 years a count, 34 counts, capped at 20 years total.
Who did time: Cohen, 3 years federal. Weisselberg, 5 months on Rikers on a plea that included falsifying business records.
Why not him: Nothing stopped the conviction. The judge gave him an unconditional discharge because of the office he was about to take.
2. The 2020 election scheme (charged by Jack Smith)
The law: 18 USC §1512(c) obstruction, 20 years. §241 conspiracy against rights, 10. §371 conspiracy, 5.
Who did time: Over the same January 6 attack, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio got 22 years and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes got 18, both for seditious conspiracy.
Why not him: Dismissed under the sitting-president policy. The five-year clock ran out around January 2026. On day one he pardoned Tarrio and commuted Rhodes.
3. The classified documents (charged by Jack Smith)
The law: 18 USC §793(e), 10 years a count, 32 counts. §1512(c), 20.
Who did time: Jack Teixeira, 15 years for six Espionage Act counts.
Why not him: Judge Cannon dismissed the case, DOJ dropped the appeal, and Cannon blocked release of Smith’s report on it. The clock runs out around mid-2027, while he’s still in office.
4. Defying court orders (AP: judges found violations in at least 31 lawsuits; Judge Boasberg found probable cause for criminal contempt)
The law: 18 USC §401 criminal contempt. No fixed cap, but anything over 6 months needs a jury.
Who did time: Chelsea Manning, about a year jailed for civil contempt plus $256,000 in fines, for refusing to testify to a grand jury. Bannon and Navarro, 4 months each for contempt of Congress.
Why not him: Criminal contempt is pardonable, and he already pardoned Joe Arpaio for it in 2017. Boasberg’s inquiry is pending (see the corrections at the bottom).
5. Troops in LA (Judge Breyer: a “serious violation of the Posse Comitatus Act”)
The law: 18 USC §1385, 2 years.
Who did time: Nobody. I can’t find one criminal prosecution in the Act’s 148 years.
Why not him: Commanding troops sits about as close to “core” power as it gets, on my read. And no prosecutor has ever tried it.
6. The boat “double tap” and Minab (a UN mission found “reasonable grounds” of a US war crime at Minab; TIME on the boat, below)
The law: War Crimes Act, 18 USC §2441. Life, or death if death results.
Who did time: Lt. Clint Lorance, 19 years, court-martialed for the unpremeditated murder of two Afghan men. Blackwater guard Nicholas Slatten, life. Trump pardoned both.
Why not him: Ordering strikes is almost certainly core commander-in-chief power, so immune. For everyone else, no case moves without the written sign-off of the Attorney General, his deputy or an assistant AG (§2441(f)).
7. The oil bets and the trades (DOJ and the CFTC opened a probe into $2.6 billion in oil bets)
The law: Commodity Exchange Act, 7 USC §13(a), 10 years and $1 million. Securities and commodities fraud, §1348, 25 years.
Who did time: Raj Rajaratnam, 11 years. Rep. Chris Collins, 26 months. Rep. Steve Buyer, 22 months.
Why not him: Nobody has been named or charged over the oil bets, and no trade has been tied to Trump. He pardoned Collins about two months into his sentence and Buyer in June 2026.
8. Pay-to-play: the CZ pardon, the crypto, the UAE stake (alleged by Senate Democrats and Rep. Raskin; Binance and Zhao’s lawyers deny any link)
The law: Bribery, 18 USC §201(b). Up to 15 years, a fine of up to three times the bribe or $250,000, whichever is greater, and a court may bar you from federal office.
Who did time: Sen. Bob Menendez, 11 years for gold bars, cash and acting as Egypt’s agent.
Why not him: The pardon power is “conclusive and preclusive,” the Court’s own words. The federal conflict-of-interest law exempts the president by definition. And when Rep. Henry Cuellar was charged with taking about $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani oil company and a Mexican bank, Trump pardoned him before trial.
9. The Qatar 747
The law: Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act. No criminal penalty. The only remedy is a civil suit by the Attorney General for the gift’s value plus $5,000, and even that is contested, because the Pentagon accepted the plane.
Who did time: Nobody. There’s no crime to do time for.
10. Impoundment, the IG firings, the Hatch Act (found unlawful by GAO and courts)
The law: No criminal penalty at all. The Hatch Act exempts “the President and the Vice President” by name.
Who did time: Nobody. The law has no teeth.
Add up the “why not him” lines. About half of what courts and GAO found carries no criminal penalty. The rest hits immunity, DOJ policy, a DOJ he staffed, or a pardon. The one conviction that got past all four walls produced a sentence of nothing.
An honest footnote on number 6: the military rarely prosecutes killings it calls mistakes, under either party. After a 2021 Kabul drone strike killed 10 civilians, 7 of them children, Biden’s Defense Secretary disciplined nobody. What’s different now is the two cases on this sheet where Americans actually got long sentences for killing civilians. Both ended in pardons from the man now at the top of the chain. I can find no discipline of anyone over Minab, and the Pentagon’s probe is still unreleased.
The cronies don’t get immunity. They get pardons.
Trump v. United States protects one man. It says nothing about aides, cabinet secretaries or co-conspirators. Sotomayor’s SEAL Team 6 hit and coup both need somebody else to carry them out, and the ruling immunizes none of them.
That doesn’t leave them naked. Federal officers still have a public-authority defense. Under In re Neagle they also have Supremacy Clause immunity against state prosecution for acts within their federal duties. On war crimes they have the §2441(f) gate: the case goes nowhere unless the Attorney General, his deputy or an assistant AG signs off in writing, and all of them answer to Blanche. Their real shields are a pardon and control of DOJ.
The boat strike. On 2 September 2025 a follow-up strike killed two survivors clinging to the wreckage. The Washington Post reported that Hegseth gave a “kill everybody” order. Adm. Frank Bradley told lawmakers, per Sen. Tom Cotton, that there was no order “to give no quarter or to kill them all.” Whether that order was given is disputed. What the statute says is not. The War Crimes Act defines murder to include intentionally killing people “placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause.” TIME called the strike an attack on “injured and shipwrecked people—a clear breach of the laws of war and of U.S. law.” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis told PBS: “Anybody in the chain of command that was responsible for it, that had vision of it, needs to be held accountable.” I can find no probe, no referral and no charge. The only people ever charged under §2441 are four Russian soldiers, in 2023, and they’ve never been arrested.
The traders. The Commodity Exchange Act does reach White House and Pentagon insiders. Dodd-Frank’s “Eddie Murphy rule,” 7 USC §6c(a)(4), bars any federal employee or agent from trading commodities on nonpublic government information. A willful violation is a felony carrying 10 years and $1 million. The one White House staffer sanctioned so far is a teleprompter operator who, the CFTC says, bet on Kalshi using advance copies of presidential speeches: about $172,000 and a three-year trading ban, civil only. The one American criminally charged with betting on military secrets is a soldier. DOJ says Gannon Van Dyke turned about $33,000 in Polymarket bets on the Maduro raid into about $410,000. He has pleaded not guilty, has moved to dismiss, and trial is set for 7 December. Trump’s take, per ABC: “The whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a casino.” Nobody has been named over the $2.6 billion in oil bets.
Don Jr. He holds no office, so no immunity applies to him at all. But no outlet or expert has named a statute he broke by letting a Putin-decorated oligarch pay for his wedding party, and I’m not going to invent one. What’s on the record is the Attorney General’s response: “Am I investigating what?”
The pardon, already in use. On 7 November 2025 Trump signed a proclamation pardoning 77 named allies from the 2020 elector scheme, including Giuliani, Meadows, Eastman and Powell. It also pardoned “all United States citizens” for the same conduct. One line reads: “This pardon does not apply to the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.” By DOJ’s 1974 memo, he couldn’t have covered himself anyway. Now look at his first-term record: 237 clemency grants, 84% of them in his last year, and about 140 on the final night. The pattern points at January 2029.
The limit is the states. A president can only pardon “offenses against the United States.” Steve Bannon is the proof. Trump pardoned his federal “We Build the Wall” fraud charges in 2021. Manhattan charged the same scheme under state law, and Bannon pleaded guilty in February 2025. He got a conditional discharge, but the conviction stuck. And in Georgia v. Meadows, the federal appeals court over Georgia held that a former federal officer can’t move a state prosecution into federal court. Georgia, the big one, is dead. It was dismissed last November, after four co-defendants had already pleaded guilty and taken probation. Arizona’s fake-elector case kept going after the pardon, but I can’t confirm where it stands today.
The clock
The default federal statute of limitations is five years. Securities fraud gets six, tax evasion six, and wire fraud that hits a bank ten. His term ends 20 January 2029, so a 2025 act goes stale in 2030 and a 2026 act in 2031. For a five-year crime, that leaves a future DOJ somewhere between one and five years after he leaves, depending on when the act happened.
Some rough dates:
— The $TRUMP coin launched 17 January 2025, three days before he took office, when he was a private citizen with no immunity. Devon Ombres of the Center for American Progress has pointed to the coin as the kind of unofficial conduct the immunity ruling leaves open. Nobody has charged anything. If anyone ever did, the five-year clock runs to January 2030.
— The CZ pardon was 21 October 2025. Nobody has alleged bribery in a court, and Binance and Zhao’s lawyers deny any link. If anyone ever charged it that way, the clock runs to October 2030. It would also test whether bribery tied to an immune pardon can be prosecuted at all.
— The spring 2026 oil bets, if anyone is ever named: 2031, or 2032 under the six-year securities clock.
— The boat strike: never.
That last one comes from §2441(e). A war crime under Common Article 3 “may be found … at any time without limitation,” whether or not anyone died. Common Article 3 covers armed conflicts “not of an international character.” In October 2025 the administration told Congress it is in a “non-international armed conflict” with the cartels. My reading, not a court’s: by its own legal theory, the boat campaign is conduct that never goes stale.
No statute pauses the clock while a president sits. DOJ’s 2000 opinion admitted the problem and promised: “At most, therefore, prosecution would be delayed rather than denied.” The January 6 conduct passed its five-year mark around January 2026. The documents case expires around mid-2027, about 18 months before he leaves. Delayed became denied.
One more small cruelty. 18 USC §3287 pauses the clock on fraud against the government “when the United States is at war or Congress has enacted a specific authorization for the use of the Armed Forces.” Congress never declared or authorized this war. So on my reading, and it’s arguable because the statute never defines “at war,” the failure I wrote about this morning may also switch off the longer clock for war profiteering.
Jack Smith, under oath on 17 December 2025: “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.” His report says the case died because of the sitting-president policy, not the evidence, which “was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.” In the deposition he said he would prosecute a former president on the same facts today, “regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.” That case is past its clock now.
Other countries lock theirs up
The usual line is that nobody does this. Plenty of countries do.
France. Nicolas Sarkozy was convicted in September 2025 of criminal conspiracy in the Libyan-financing case and sentenced to five years. On 21 October he walked into La Santé prison, the first former French president behind bars. He was out after about 20 days pending appeal. Prosecutors have asked the appeals court for seven years, and the verdict is expected 30 November.
Brazil. Jair Bolsonaro got 27 years and 3 months for an attempted coup, final since November 2025. Generals and an admiral were convicted with him, one of them his own running mate. He served in a federal police cell and then a prison complex. As of the latest reporting I can find, he’s on temporary humanitarian house arrest with an ankle monitor after a hospitalization. When the US leaned on the court with sanctions and visa threats during the trial, Justice Flávio Dino asked whether anyone thought “a credit card or Mickey are going to change the ruling.”
South Korea. Yoon Suk Yeol, who declared martial law in December 2024, was sentenced in February 2026 to life for leading an insurrection, after prosecutors asked for death. His defense minister got 30 years. Two of his predecessors, Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak, did prison time for corruption. Yoon himself pardoned Lee in 2022. Now Yoon is the one in a cell with a life sentence.
Israel. Ehud Olmert served 16 months for bribery, the first former Israeli prime minister in a cell. Netanyahu is on trial right now. Trump publicly demanded his trial be “CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY” and wrote to Israel’s president asking for a pardon. When Trump weighs in on another democracy’s courts, it’s for the defendant.
Peru sentenced four ex-presidents in 2024 and 2025, including Alejandro Toledo, 20½ years for $35 million in bribes. The United States extradited him. We’ll ship another country’s former president home to prison. Ours got 34 felonies and not even a fine.
The US record: zero presidents ever sentenced to jail. Ford pardoned Nixon before any charge was filed, and his approval rating fell from 71% to 50%. The only president ever convicted got Godspeed. Other countries aren’t braver than us. They made a different choice, and we’re still making ours.
So where’s the jail?
It exists in three places. It exists on paper, on the sheet above, in statutes nobody wrote as a joke. It exists abroad, in the cells that held Sarkozy, Bolsonaro and Yoon. And a piece of it exists in New York, in a felony conviction no president can pardon, sitting on appeal with his name on it.
Here it waits on gavels and elections, same as everything in part one. A few things are true and worth acting on:
— DOJ’s own lawyers wrote that “Congress could overcome” the clock problem “by imposing its own tolling rule.” Congress can extend a limitation period that hasn’t expired yet. Once it expires, Congress can’t revive it. The documents case runs out around mid-2027. The Congress elected on 3 November takes its seats in January 2027, so it would have months, not years, and the bill would still have to get past his veto.
— State prosecutors are the only ones no pardon can stop. You elect most of them.
— The war-crime clock never runs out. The gate on it belongs to whoever is Attorney General, and the president picks the Attorney General. In the end every line on that sheet depends on who wins elections.
The midterms are 3 November. The next presidential election is in 2028, and if the pattern holds, the pardons come the following January. The laws exist. The cells exist; ask Sarkozy. What’s missing is people in office willing to enforce those laws on everybody, him included. Same ending as this morning: be one of the bodies. Go.
Corrections to part one
Three updates, same rules. First, Boasberg’s contempt inquiry. I wrote that an appeals panel shut it down 2–1. That was true in April. On 22 June, per Wikipedia’s summary of the case, the full D.C. Circuit agreed to rehear the case en banc and vacated the panel ruling. That revived the inquiry, and it’s pending. Second, I called Van Dyke a master sergeant. DOJ’s release gives no rank, only “active-duty soldier” at Fort Bragg. Third, I wrote that the Posse Comitatus ruling was “stayed on appeal.” The stay was administrative. Breyer later ordered the troops out, the Ninth Circuit backed him, and the LA deployment ended on 31 December 2025.
Sources
Part one — Why the Fuck Are We Putting Up With Trump?
AP — Excerpts from Trump’s hush-money sentencing
NY Penal Law §70.30 — the 20-year aggregate cap
CNBC — Michael Cohen sentenced to 3 years
AP — What rights Trump loses as a felon
Sentencing Project — Four million denied the vote
NBC New York — Hellerstein denies removal a third time
Supreme Court — Trump v. United States (2024)
DOJ OLC — A Sitting President’s Amenability to Indictment (2000)
DOJ OLC — Presidential self-pardon memo (1974)
TIME — Timeline of the boat-strike survivors’ killing
PBS NewsHour — Adm. Bradley and the double-tap strike
CFTC — White House teleprompter operator sanctioned
DOJ — Soldier charged over prediction-market bets
DOJ — Proclamation pardoning 2020 elector-scheme participants
11th Circuit — Georgia v. Meadows
DOJ — Special Counsel Smith report, Volume 1
House Judiciary — Jack Smith deposition transcript
BBC — Sarkozy becomes France’s first ex-president behind bars
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