Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes Thursday as a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.
Trump sat stone-faced while the verdict was read as cheering from the street below could be heard in the hallway on the courthouseB次元官网网址檚 15th floor where the decision was revealed after more than nine hours of deliberations.
B次元官网网址淭his was a rigged, disgraceful trial,B次元官网网址� an angry Trump told reporters after leaving the courtroom. B次元官网网址淭he real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people. They know what happened, and everyone knows what happened here.B次元官网网址�
Judge Juan Merchan set sentencing for July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where GOP leaders, who remained resolute in their support in the immediate aftermath of the verdict, are expected to formally make him their nominee.
The verdict is a stunning legal reckoning for Trump and exposes him to potential prison time in the city where his manipulations of the tabloid press helped catapult him from a real estate tycoon to reality television star and ultimately president. As he seeks to reclaim the White House in this yearB次元官网网址檚 election, the judgment presents voters with another test of their willingness to accept TrumpB次元官网网址檚 boundary-breaking behavior.
Trump is expected to quickly appeal the verdict and will face an awkward dynamic as he returns to the campaign trail with felony convictions. There are no campaign rallies on the calendar for now, though heB次元官网网址檚 expected to hold fundraisers next week.
The falsifying business records charges carry up to four years behind bars, though Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Braff would not say Thursday if prosecutors intend to seek imprisonment, and it is not clear whether the judge B次元官网网址� who earlier in the trial warned of jail time for gag order violations B次元官网网址� would impose that punishment even if asked.
The conviction, and even imprisonment, will not bar Trump from continuing his pursuit of the White House.
Trump faces three other felony indictments, but the New York case may be the only one to reach a conclusion before the November election, adding to the significance of the outcome. Though the legal and historical implications of the verdict are readily apparent, the political consequences are less so given its potential to reinforce rather than reshape already-hardened opinions about Trump.
Ahead of the verdict, TrumpB次元官网网址檚 campaign had argued that, no matter what the jury decided, the outcome was unlikely to sway voters B次元官网网址� and that the election would instead be decided by issues such as inflation.
For another candidate in another time, a criminal conviction might doom a presidential run, but TrumpB次元官网网址檚 political career has endured through two impeachments, allegations of sexual abuse, investigations into everything from potential ties to Russia to plotting to overturn an election, and personally salacious storylines including the emergence of a recording in which he boasted about grabbing womenB次元官网网址檚 genitals.
In addition, the general allegations of the case have been known to voters for years and, while tawdry, are widely seen as less grievous than the allegations he faces in three other cases that charge him with subverting American democracy and mishandling national security secrets.
Even so, the verdict is likely to give President Joe Biden and fellow Democrats space to sharpen arguments that Trump is unfit for office, though for now the White House offered only a muted statement saying that it respected the rule of law. On the other hand, the decision will also provide fodder for the presumptive Republican nominee to advance his unsupported claims that he is victimized by a criminal justice system he insists is politically motivated against him.
Trump maintained throughout the trial that he had done nothing wrong and that the case should never have been brought, railing against the proceedings from inside the courthouse B次元官网网址� where he was joined by a parade of high-profile Republican allies B次元官网网址� and racking up fines for violating a gag order with inflammatory out-of-court comments about witnesses.
Republicans showed no sign of loosening their embrace of the party leader, with House Speaker Mike Johnson releasing a statement lamenting what he called B次元官网网址渁 shameful day in American history.B次元官网网址� He called the case B次元官网网址渁 purely political exercise, not a legal one.B次元官网网址�
The first criminal trial of a former American president always presented a unique test of the court system, not only because of TrumpB次元官网网址檚 prominence but also because of his relentless verbal attacks on the foundation of the case and its participants. But the verdict from the 12-person jury marked a repudiation of TrumpB次元官网网址檚 efforts to undermine confidence in the proceedings or to potentially impress the panel with a show of GOP support.
The trial involved charges that Trump falsified business records to cover up hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who said she had sex with the married Trump in 2006.
The $130,000 payment was made by TrumpB次元官网网址檚 former lawyer and personal fixer Michael Cohen to buy DanielsB次元官网网址� silence during the final weeks of the 2016 race in what prosecutors allege was an effort to interfere in the election. When Cohen was reimbursed, the payments were recorded as legal expenses, which prosecutors said was an unlawful attempt to mask the true purpose of the transaction. TrumpB次元官网网址檚 lawyers contend they were legitimate payments for legal services.
Trump has denied the sexual encounter, and his lawyers argued during the trial that his celebrity status, particularly during the 2016 campaign, made him a target for extortion. TheyB次元官网网址檝e said hush money deals to bury negative stories about Trump were motivated by personal considerations such as the impact on his family and brand as a businessman, not political ones. They also sought to undermine the credibility of Cohen, the star prosecution witness who pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges related to the payments, as driven by personal animus toward Trump as well as fame and money.
The trial featured more than four weeks of occasionally riveting testimony that revisited an already well-documented chapter from TrumpB次元官网网址檚 past, when his 2016 campaign was threatened by the disclosure of an B次元官网网址淎ccess HollywoodB次元官网网址� recording that captured him talking about grabbing women sexually without their permission and the prospect of other stories about Trump and sex surfacing that would be harmful to his candidacy.
Trump himself did not testify, but jurors heard his voice through a secret recording of a conversation with Cohen in which he and the lawyer discussed a $150,000 hush money deal involving a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who has said she had an affair with Trump: B次元官网网址淲hat do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?B次元官网网址� Trump was heard saying on the recording made by Cohen.
Daniels herself testified, offering at times a graphic recounting of the sexual encounter she says they had in a hotel suite during a Lake Tahoe golf tournament. The former publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, testified about how he worked to keep stories harmful to the Trump campaign from becoming public at all, including by having his company buy McDougalB次元官网网址檚 story.
Jurors also heard from Keith Davidson, the lawyer who negotiated the hush money payments on behalf of Daniels and McDougal.
He detailed the tense negotiations to get both women compensated for their silence but also faced an aggressive round of questioning from a Trump attorney who noted that Davidson had helped broker similar hush money deals in cases involving other prominent figures.
But the most pivotal witness, by far, was Cohen, who spent days on the stand and gave jurors an insiderB次元官网网址檚 view of the hush money scheme and what he said was TrumpB次元官网网址檚 detailed knowledge of it.
B次元官网网址淛ust take care of it,B次元官网网址� he quoted Trump as saying at one point.
He offered jurors the most direct link between Trump and the heart of the charges, recounting a meeting in which they and the then-chief financial officer of Trump Organization described a plan to have Cohen reimbursed in monthly installments for legal services.
And he emotionally described his dramatic break with Trump in 2018, when he decided to cooperate with prosecutors after a decade-long career as the then-presidentB次元官网网址檚 personal fixer.
B次元官网网址淭o keep the loyalty and to do the things that he had asked me to do, I violated my moral compass, and I suffered the penalty, as has my family,B次元官网网址� Cohen told the jury.
The outcome provides a degree of vindication for Bragg, who had characterized the case as being about election interference rather than hush money and defended it against criticism from legal experts who called it the weakest of the four prosecutions against Trump.
B次元官网网址淚 did my job,B次元官网网址� he told reporters after the verdict. B次元官网网址淥ur job is to follow the facts and the law without fear or favor, and thatB次元官网网址檚 exactly what we did here.B次元官网网址�
But it took on added importance not only because it proceeded to trial first but also because it could be the only one of the cases to reach a jury before the election.
The other three cases B次元官网网址� local and federal charges in Atlanta and Washington that he conspired to undo the 2020 election, as well as a federal indictment in Florida charging him with illegally hoarding top-secret records B次元官网网址� are bogged down by delays or appeals.
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