In a column published Saturday, Dowd said after the guilty verdict, she called her brother and her sister — both of whom, she said, are Republicans who had hoped for a Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley victory — to gauge whether Trump’s conviction had been a final straw for them.

“I wasn’t going to vote for Trump,” Maureen Dowd’s sister, Peggy, told her, according to Dowd’s column. “But now I am because I thought this whole thing was a sham.”

“I couldn’t get to sleep,” Dowd recounted her sister telling her. “I was dreaming that I was in jail after a sham court trial. I was thinking that if they arrest me, I’d be out of luck. My father’s dead and two of my brothers are dead. Who else would save me?”

“They want to put him in jail three days before our convention?” Dowd’s sister asked her, according to the column. “The man is surrounded by Secret Service. What will they do? Put him in a cell with four Secret Service guys around him?”