A New York jury has found that former US President Donald Trump falsified business records during the 2016 election campaign.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, charged Trump last year with 34 counts of criminal behavior, one for every invoice, voucher, and check involved in repaying his lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, for a $130,000 hush money payment to former adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Bragg alleged that paying Daniels to keep quiet about their alleged affair amounted to the Republican seeking “to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.” Both Cohen and Daniels testified in court.
On Thursday evening, the jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts, making him the first president in US history to be convicted of a felony. The judge will determine Trump’s sentence on July 11. He faces up to four years in prison per count.
Trump, who is running for reelection against President Joe Biden, has long argued that the prosecution is a politically motivated “witch hunt.”
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Trump’s conviction reaffirmed “the American principle that no one is above the law,” President Joe Biden said at the White House, in his first public remarks since the verdict was handed down.
“Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself” and may now appeal the decision “like anyone else,” Biden continued. Trump’s insistence that the trial was “rigged” is “dangerous,” the president added.
“Crooked Joe Biden” and the Democrats are trying to win the 2024 election “in the courts because they can’t win it at the ballot box,” Trump declared. “It’s my honor to be doing this,” the former president said in closing. “November 5, remember, November 5 is the most important day in the history of our country.”
Trump said that he intends to appeal Thursday’s verdict. “We’re going to be appealing it on many different things,” he said, adding that Merchan “wouldn’t allow us to have witnesses, he wouldn’t allow us to talk, he wouldn’t allow us to do anything – this judge was a tyrant.”
Trump revealed that his campaign took in a record $39 million from small donors in the ten hours after his conviction on Thursday. “I guess it’s backfired,” he told the crowd. “They shouldn’t have brought this case.”
Trump slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for elevating bookkeeping irregularities into 36 felony counts that could see him jailed for 187 years “when you have violent crime all over this city at levels that nobody’s ever seen before… when you have businesses leaving.”
“This is bigger than Trump, this is bigger than me, this is bigger than my presidency, and the people understand it,” he continued, pointing to a Daily Mail poll published on Thursday evening, which showed his approval rating rising by six points following the conviction.
“The public understands and they understand what’s going on,” Trump said. “This is a scam and it’s a rigged trial.”
Trump slammed judge Juan Merchan for placing him under a gag order, calling Merchan “conflicted” and the trial itself “very unfair.” Trump said that he would not get into specifics, as he can still be “put in jail” for violating the order, telling reporters that he would “play that game a little longer.”
Cheers erupted as Trump walked through the lobby at Trump Tower, the place where he announced his first presidential campaign in 2015. The presumptive Republican nominee in this year's election launched into a speech criticizing the state of the country under President Biden, hammering the Democrat over his taxation and immigration policies, and accusing him of orchestrating the case against him.
“They’re in total conjunction with the White House and [Department of Justice],” Trump declared. “This is all done by Biden and his people. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) both had their best fundraising day of the 2024 election cycle on Thursday, the directors of both organizations announced on social media on Friday. The NRCC raised more than $300,000, “shattering the previous record by over $125k,” spokesman Jack Pandol wrote on X.
Trump’s own donation website crashed shortly after the guilty verdict was read out. Among those who contributed to Trump’s campaign are venture capitalist Shaun Maguire, who announced a $300,000 donation to the presumptive Republican candidate, and an unnamed donor who pledged $800,000, according to former New York Representative Lee Zeldin.
Trump’s payments to Stormy Daniels were filed as legal expenses because they were paid through his lawyer, Michael Cohen, the former president argued on his Truth Social platform. “I was not involved in that designation, but what else would you have called it? It was, in fact, a LEGAL EXPENSE. That is the so-called ‘CRIME’,” he complained.
Prosecutors argued that this bookkeeping decision amounted to “election fraud,” as the disclosure of these payments could have negatively influenced the 2016 election.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he would like to refrain from commenting on the Trump verdict, but noted that it was obvious that some forces in the US are seeking the “elimination of [their] political rivals by all possible legal and illegal means.”
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was cautious when commenting about the verdict, declining to say whether he would work with Trump if he is reelected. “You wouldn’t expect me to comment on another country’s domestic politics or judicial processes. I’m focused squarely on the election here at home,” he said.
Meanwhile, Keir Starmer, the leader of the UK Labour Party, described the situation as “wholly unprecedented,” but noted that “we would work with whomever they [Americans] choose as their president.”
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, with whom Trump has forged close ties, described the ex-president a “man of honor” who “always put America first… and commanded respect around the world” while in office. “Let the people make their verdict this November! Keep on fighting, Mr. President!” he added.
American journalist Tucker Carlson suggested that the guilty verdict won’t stop Trump. “He’ll win the [presidential] election if he’s not killed first,” he said, adding that the development “does mark the end of the fairest justice system in the world.”
Carlson explained the verdict by saying: “Import the Third World, become the Third World. That’s what we just saw.”
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was Trump’s main Democratic opponent in the 2016 presidential election, appeared to cheer the guilty verdict, even without mentioning his name.
Speaking at the Vital Voices Global Festival in Washington on Thursday, she started her speech by asking the audience with a smile: “Anything going on today?” She then paused, as the crowd applauded.
The Trump verdict has sparked a firestorm among supporters, some of whom have called for violence, Reuters reported, citing comments posted on social media networks and forums. One person wrote on the right-wing political website Patriots.Win that someone in New York City “needs to take care of” Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the case, while expressing hope that he will “meet illegals with a machete.”
Others called for attacks on the jurors who found Trump guilty, a crackdown on liberals, as well as outright armed rebellion, the agency added, noting that some of the posts were later removed.
Trump is almost certain to appeal the verdict – which he can do within 30 days of his sentencing scheduled for next month. According to Politico, this process could “stretch on for months or even years.”
Judge Juan Merchan, who will hand down Trump’s sentence on July 11, could either put him behind bars or opt for probation due to his age and status as first-time offender, Bloomberg reported.
According to the New York Times, a probationary term would mean that the ex-president would have to report regularly to New York City’s probation department and could be immediately jailed if he commits new crimes.
Commenting on the verdict, Ian Sams, the spokesman for the White House’s Counsel Office, said, “we respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment.”
The White House also declined to respond to additional questions about how President Joe Biden reacted to the development. According to the New York Times, this comes as Biden has told officials to avoid the topic of criminal charges against Trump.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested that Trump’s conviction will “backfire on the Democrats.”
“Every time that President Trump has been indicted, his approval ratings actually increased,” Kennedy told Fox News host Jesse Waters, arguing that “there is a large number of Americans who are going to see this as politicization [and] weaponization of the enforcement agencies.”
It is difficult to predict how much the verdict will affect the election, given the unprecedented nature of the situation and Trump’s unique position in American politics, the Washington Post analyst Philip Bump wrote. “This is uncharted territory,” he noted.
At the same time, Bump admitted that “Trump’s supporters are perhaps uniquely unaffected by negative news about their preferred candidate.”
According to the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released hours before the jurors announced their decision on Thuresday, 67% of respondents said that a guilty verdict would make no difference to their vote in November.
Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche said that his client intends appeal the verdict as soon as possible.
Speaking to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Blanche said that the defense team was “prepared for a guilty verdict.”
“[We] were fighting to win the case, of course, but a hung jury would have been as close to a win as we could’ve gotten,” he explained.
Democrats welcomed the guilty verdict. “America is a nation built upon the rule of law. The jury has spoken and carefully rendered a decision. Responsible leadership requires the verdict to be respected,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote on X.
Adam Schiff, a US representative from California, warned that “this verdict will only increase Donald Trump’s attempts to discredit the justice system and tear down our democracy.”
The trial will have no effect on the lifelong state protection Trump is entitled to as a former US president. “Today’s outcome has no bearing on the manner in which the United States Secret Service carries out its protective mission. Our security measures will proceed unchanged,” the Secert Service said in a statement.
The former president returned to Trump Tower in Manhattan on Thursday evening. He was greeted by a group of supporters, who held American flags and wore the trademark red ‘MAGA’ hats.
The shares of Trump Media fell as much as 15% after the jury revealed the guilty verdict, according to CNBC. The stock remained down around 9% on Thursday evening.
Trump Media owns Truth Social, the social media platform Trump founded in 2021 after he was banned from Twitter (now called X) and Facebook. The former president owns 65% of the company’s shares.
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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg told reporters that his team had presented a strong case against Trump, including more than 30 witness testimonies and documentary evidence.
“While this defendant might be unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial and ultimately today this verdict in the same manner as every other case,” he said.
The website that raises money for the Trump campaign crashed shortly after the guilty verdict was announced. “The American people see through Crooked Joe Biden’s rigged show trial,” the campaign wrote on X. “So many Americans were moved to donate to President Trump’s campaign that the WinRed pages went down.”
Around an hour later, the campaign announced that access to the donation page has been restored.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, slammed the verdict. “Today is a shameful day in American history,” he said in a statement. “The American people rightfully see this is lawfare, and they know it is – and dangerous.”
“President Trump has never stopped fighting for the American people – even as he has faced the wrath of a weaponized justice system and a political witch hunt sham trial,” Johnson wrote on X, urging people to donate to the Trump campaign.
According to CNN, Thursday’s ruling does not automatically disqualify Trump from the ballot on Election Day on November 5.
The US Constitution does not bar convicted felons from running for president. The 14th Amendment says that whose who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” cannot hold a political office. However, the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Congress must pass a special law in order to invoke this ban.
Several US states previously tried to bar Trump from seeking another term, citing his role in the 2021 US Capitol riot. The Supreme Court struck down their efforts.
The Biden campaign praised the guilty verdict, with spokesman Michael Tyler saying that “Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain.”
Trump slammed the trial as a “disgrace,” and claimed that he judge in the case “was corrupt.”
“We didn’t do a thing wrong. I’m a very innocent man,” he told reporters immediately after the verdict.
Trump repeated his claim that the prosecution was arranged by the White House in order to damage his campaign. “This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent,” the 45th president said.