Having prosecuted countless people in her time, Sunny Hostin is pretty sure that at least one of Donald Trump’s former employees will turn on him after being named in the superseding indictment. In fact, the host of “The View” thinks the man will “sing like a canary.”
Among the three new charges issued on Thursday is the allegation that Trump ordered multiple former employees, including Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, to destroy security footage from the resort shortly after being subpoenaed for said footage.
As a result, De Oliveira was named a codefendant alongside Trump, but Hostin doesn’t expect that to last long.
“He is going to sing like a canary,” she said. “Because once you’re faced with an indictment, a federal indictment — even if it’s one charge, that’s up to 10 to 20 years in prison. And he ain’t gonna spend 10 to 20 years in prison for Donald Trump.”
She added, “I used to love, as a prosecutor, those weak canaries. Those weak canaries, they sing real, real well.”
Cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin, however, disagreed — simply because Trump is the one paying for De Oliveira’s attorney. Although technically, it seems Trump supporters are actually footing that bill, as a new Washington Post report on Sunday revealed that the twice-indicted former president’s PAC has paid roughly $40 million in legal fees for himself and colleagues.
“Donald Trump operates like a mob boss,” Farah Griffin said. “He’s done this throughout his career, he — Michael Cohen spoke into this — he pays for people’s legal bills to the tune of $200,000 to try to keep them loyal to him. [De Oliveira] is a guy who’s like a property manager at Mar-a-Lago, a pretty low-level gentleman who spoke about how he’s like, ‘I don’t know, he was my boss, and he asked me to do it.’”
She continued, “So, I would encourage him, break, because you are facing federal prison. But he’s currently having his lawyer paid for by Trump, which I’ll remind you, my friend Cassidy Hutchinson didn’t feel like she could tell the truth when she had a Trump-paid-for attorney.”
Hostin held firm in her guess though, feeling extremely confident that De Oliveira will turn on his boss.
“Let me tell you, one little visit to a little federal prison — even outside when you meet with the prosecutors, because that’s where sometimes we meet you — he’s gonna sing like a little weak canary.”
You can watch the full discussion from “The View” in the video above.
