RNC planning for possibility of Trump being jailed during convention, chair says
The Republican National Committee (RNC) is planning for the possibility of former President Trump, the GOP presumptive nominee, being jailed during the convention, the party’s chair said on Tuesday.
“Yeah, we're working on that right now,” Michael Whatley, the RNC chair, said during his Tuesday appearance on Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
“I'm actually going up to Milwaukee this week, and we're going to have a series of conversations,” he said.
Trump was found guilty Thursday last week on all 34 felony counts in his hush-money case. The New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records to hide alleged extramarital affairs during his 2016 presidential run. Judge Juan Merchan said his sentencing hearing was set for July 11, just four days before the RNC convention kicks off.
Trump has vowed to appeal the verdict, and seems unlikely to face a jail term during such an appeal. GOP senators and other Republicans up in arms over the verdict have warned that Trump's freedom of movement should not be compromised by a sentence.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has called for the Supreme Court to get involved.
Whatley stated that the RNC expects the former president to be officially nominated at the party’s mid-July convention in Milwaukee.
“We expect that Donald Trump is going to be in Milwaukee and he's going to be able to accept that nomination and if not, we will make whatever contingency planning we need to make for it,” he said. “But the fact is, he's going to be our nominee, and he's going to be the 47th president of the United States.”
Whatley, who was elected as the chair of the committee in March, did not share more details about the plans, but added that "everything is being thought about" regarding Trump’s options to still communicate to the base, regardless if he is behind bars or not.
"We'll cross that bridge but you sort of have to go into this stuff, as we certainly will be planning on it," Whatley said on Tuesday. "We'll be thinking about it, and we're working on that right now. But what we want to do is we want to have a show that is going to roll out Donald Trump and his vision for America, which is going to set up this election cycle."
The North Carolina Republican added that the former president “will communicate directly with the American voters the way that he always does.”
RNC’s co-chair Lara Trump similarly mentioned on Sunday that the RNC needs to be “ready for anything” in regards to Trump, but she stated the committee will have “several” plans in place to pivot to as the convention nears.
"It's ironic to me you had to rush this case through, and now we have to wait over a month, of course, for sentencing,” she said during her Sunday appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Everyone can read into the irony of that, of course.”
"But, yes, we have to make plans as they happen, and we're going to have several contingency plans,” she added. “The truth is, it really doesn't matter whether it's from Trump Tower in Manhattan, whether it's from Mar-a-Lago, whether it's from our convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We will nominate Donald Trump as our Republican nominee, and that's what ultimately matters.”