Here’s What You Should Know About Donald Trump’s Silent Trial

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 criminal charges marks the end of the former president’s historic secret trial, but the fight over the case is far from over.

Now comes the sentencing and the prospect of a prison sentence. A long appeals process. And at the same time, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee still has to deal with three more criminal cases and a campaign that could see him return to the White House.

The Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records after more than nine hours of deliberations over two days in the case stemming from a secret payment to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump angrily denounced the trial as a “disgrace,” telling reporters he is an “innocent man.”

Some important conclusions from the jury’s decision:

The big question now is whether Trump will be able to go to prison. The answer is uncertain. Judge Juan M. Merchan set sentencing for July 11, just days before Republicans formally nominate him for president.

The charge of falsifying business records is a Class E felony in New York, the lowest level of criminal charges in the state. It is punishable by up to four years in prison, although the punishment is ultimately up to the judge and there is no guarantee he will give Trump prison terms. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to say whether prosecutors would seek prison time.

It is unclear to what extent the judge can take into account the political and logistical complexities of imprisoning a former president who is running to regain the White House. Other punishments may include a fine or probation. And it’s possible the judge will allow Trump to avoid serving any punishment until he exhausts his appeals.

Trump faces the threat of more serious prison sentences in the other three cases he faces, but those cases have been mired in appeals and other legal fights, so it remains unclear whether any of them will go to trial before the November election.

The conviction does not prevent Trump from continuing his campaign or becoming president. And he can still vote for himself in his home state of Florida as long as he stays out of prison in New York state.

Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who serves as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday that Trump would hold virtual rallies and campaign events if he were convicted and sentenced to house arrest.

In a deeply divided America, it is unclear whether Trump’s once-unimaginable criminal conviction will have any impact on the election.

Top strategists in both parties believe Trump still remains well positioned to defeat Biden, although he now faces the prospect of a prison sentence and three separate criminal cases still pending. In the short term, at least, there were immediate signs that the guilty verdict was helping to unify the disparate factions of the Republican Party, as GOP officials across the political spectrum rallied behind their presumptive presidential nominee in trouble, and hours after the verdict, his campaign was already reporting a flood of fundraising dollars.

Some polls have been carried out on the prospect of a guilty verdict, although such hypothetical scenarios are notoriously difficult to predict. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll found that just 4% of Trump supporters said they would withdraw their support if he were convicted of a crime, although another 16% said they would reconsider the decision.

After Trump is convicted, he could challenge his conviction in an appellate division of the state’s trial court and possibly the state’s highest court. Trump’s lawyers have already laid the groundwork for appeals with objections to the charges and rulings at trial.

The defense accused the judge of bias, citing his daughter’s work running a company whose clients included President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats. The judge refused the defense’s request to withdraw from the case, saying he was certain of his “capacity to be fair and impartial”.

Trump’s lawyers will also be able to appeal the judge’s decision limiting the testimony of a potential defense expert. The defense wanted to call Bradley Smith, a Republican law professor who served on the Federal Election Commission, to refute the prosecution’s claim that the hush money payments amounted to campaign finance violations.

But the defense ultimately did not make him testify after the judge ruled that he could provide general information about the FEC but was unable to interpret how federal campaign finance laws apply to the facts of Trump’s case or opine on whether the Trump’s alleged actions violate these laws. There are often barriers surrounding expert testimony in legal matters on the basis that it is up to the judge—and not an expert hired by one side or the other—to instruct jurors about the applicable laws.

The defense may also argue that jurors were improperly allowed to hear sometimes explicit testimony from pornographic actor Stormy Daniels about her alleged sexual encounter with him in 2006. The defense unsuccessfully pushed for a mistrial due to the tawdry details that prosecutors obtained from Daniels. Defense attorney Todd Blanche argued that Daniels’ description of a power imbalance with the older, taller Trump was a “rape dog whistle,” irrelevant to the charges at hand and “the kind of testimony that makes it impossible to go back back. ”

The speed with which the jury deliberated on the 34 charges suggests they were not influenced by Trump’s defense.

The former president’s lawyers called just two witnesses in a sparse defense case, including lawyer and former federal prosecutor Robert Costello. The defense sought to use Costello to discredit prosecutors’ star witness, Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer-turned-adversary who directly implicated Trump in the hush-money scheme. But the move may have backfired devastatingly because it opened the door for prosecutors to question Costello about an alleged pressure campaign aimed at keeping Cohen loyal to Trump after the FBI raided Cohen’s property in April 2018.

While Costello supported the defense by testifying that Cohen denied that Trump knew anything about the $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels, Costello had few answers when the prosecutor confronted him with emails he sent to Cohen in which he repeatedly flaunted his close ties to Trump. -ally Rudy Giuliani. In an email, Costello told Cohen: “Sleep well tonight. you have friends in high places,” and reported that there had been “some very positive comments about you coming from the White House.”

Cohen remained calm on the witness stand in the face of the defense’s heated cross-examination. The bellicose Costello, on the other hand, irritated the judge – sometimes in full view of the jury – but continued to speak after objections and rolling his eyes. At one point, after kicking the jury out of the room, the judge became furious when he said Costello was staring at him. Merchan then briefly cleared the courtroom of reporters and reprimanded Costello, warning that if he acted again he would be removed from the courtroom.

While projecting confidence, Trump and his campaign also spent weeks trying to undermine the case ahead of a potential conviction. He has repeatedly called the entire system “rigged” — a term he also used to falsely describe the election he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020.

“Mother Teresa was unable to overcome these accusations,” he said Wednesday, invoking the Catholic nun and saint.

Trump criticized the judge, insulted Bragg and complained about members of the prosecution team while trying to paint the case as nothing more than a politically motivated witch hunt.

He also complained about being prevented from speaking about aspects of the case by a gag order, but chose not to testify. Rather than testify in the case — and subject himself to the inherent risks of perjury and cross-examination — Trump focused on the court of public opinion and the voters who will ultimately decide his fate.

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Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Steve Peoples and Jennifer Peltz contributed from New York.