A New York jury on Thursday found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, marking the first time a former U.S. president has been convicted of a crime.
The jury reached its verdict in this historic case after 9½ hours of deliberations, which began on Wednesday.
Trump will be sentenced on July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention. He faces penalties ranging from a fine to four years in prison for each count, although it is expected that the sentences would run concurrently, not consecutively.
“This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt,” Trump fumed to reporters afterward.
The verdict was delivered in the Manhattan courtroom where Trump has been on trial since April 15.
He had pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made by his former lawyer Michael Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump looked down with narrowed eyes as the jury foreperson pronounced “guilty” on each count.
The judge expressed gratitude to the jurors for their dedication throughout the lengthy trial. “You gave this matter the attention it deserved, and I want to thank you for that,” Judge Juan Merchan said. Trump appeared to scowl at the jurors as they exited the courtroom.
After the jury left, Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche filed a motion for acquittal, which the judge denied.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment on the potential sentence, stating that his office would address it in court papers.
“While this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial and ultimately today at this verdict in the same manner as every other case that comes to the courtroom doors — by following the facts and the law in doing so, without fear or favor,” Bragg said. Asked for his reaction to the verdict, Bragg, who was inundated with threats from Trump supporters during the probe, said, “I did my job. We did our job.”
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, wasted no time leveraging the news for fundraising. He declared himself a “political prisoner” on his website and urged his supporters to donate.
Legal experts informed NBC News that if Trump is sentenced to jail time, he would likely be allowed to remain free during the appeals process, which could take months or even longer. This means a sentence would probably not interfere with his ability to accept the Republican nomination at the July convention.
Moreover, it likely wouldn’t hinder his chances of being elected. “There are no other qualifications other than those in the Constitution,” explained Chuck Rosenberg, a former U.S. attorney and NBC News & MSNBC Legal Analyst, following Thursday’s verdict.
President Joe Biden’s campaign welcomed the verdict but emphasized the importance of defeating Trump in November.
“In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law,” said the campaign’s communications director, Michael Tyler. He added that “the verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box.”
In his closing argument, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the jury, “The law is the law, and it applies to everyone equally. There is no special standard for this defendant.”
“You, the jury, have the ability to hold the defendant accountable,” Steinglass said.
Trump had consistently argued that the DA’s office had no case and that no crime was committed. “President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes,” asserted Blanche in his closing statement, arguing that the payments to Cohen were legitimate.
Prosecutors countered, describing the payment to Cohen as part of a “planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures, to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior, using doctored corporate records and bank forms to conceal those payments along the way.”
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