Trump guilty on 34 counts in Stormy Daniels, falsified records case
Jury convicts former president in New York falsified records fraud trial
A New York jury found former president Donald Trump guilty Thursday on 34 felony counts that he that he purposely hid an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels in an effort to win the White House in 2016.
The jury read its verdict to the courtroom shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday, after a day and a half of deliberations, in the first conviction of a former president in U.S. history.
Shortly after the historic verdict was revealed, Trump walked out of the courtroom and again, as he has throughout the case, alleged it was “rigged” and suggested that he would appeal the ruling.
“This is far from over,” Trump said Thursday. Trump, who declined to testify in his defense, also said, “the real verdict is going to be November 5, by the people.”
Sentencing is scheduled for July 11, just days before the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump is set to accept the Republican Party nomination for president.
The case stemmed from an affair that Trump had with Daniels in 2006 and the effort to hide it via a “catch and kill” scheme by supermarket tabloid The National Enquirer. Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg charged Trump last spring with 34 counts built on allegations that he falsified business records to hide the “catch and kill” scheme.
Prosecutors placed a cadre of former Trump supporters on the stand to make the case, including former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, Daniels, and Trump’s former “fixer” Michael Cohen, who was reimbursed by Trump’s company for paying Daniels to keep quiet.
Prosecutors presented a methodical case over the course of six weeks from the middle of April to now.
Trump’s allies in the Republican Party quickly flocked to his defense, alleging the U.S. was now the “Soviet Union”, showing an inverted U.S. flag as a sign of distress and again attacking the judicial system.
“This verdict is a disgrace, and this trial should have never happened. Now more than ever, we need to rally around (Trump), take back the White House and Senate, and get this country back on track,” Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and long one of the chamber’s most senior Republicans, said in a statement on X.com. “The real verdict will be Election Day.”
However at least one Republican, former Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, who was one of Trump’s staunchest allies for years, said the GOP should remove Trump from consideration for the nomination and find someone else who won’t have the tag “convicted felon” on their name.
Top Democrats called the verdict proof that the rule of law still prevails and holds all citizens, even the most powerful, to account.
“It matters that the Republican nominee for President is a convicted criminal. The rule of law still matters.And this won’t be his last conviction,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, in a statement on X.com. “He’s committed multiple crimes and he’s going to be convicted multiple times.He can never be President again.”
Throughout, Trump’s campaign and his high-powered legal team, led by former prosecutor Todd Blanche, worked to undermine the prosecution’s case by painting Cohen, who paid Daniels to keep quiet, and others as inveterate liars.
Like Trump’s campaigns and his time in the White House, the trial was a spectacle, with Trump likely sleeping at the witness table, a man setting himself on fire, the nation’s top Republicans making press appearances in New York, Robert DeNiro savaging Trump at a Democratic press conference and the former president himself repeatedly violating a court-imposed gag order to attack members of the judiciary, including the judge overseeing the case.