A New York jury on Thursday found Donald Trump guilty of all 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records – the first time a former US president has been convicted of a crime.
The jury reached its verdict in the landmark case after 9 1/2 hours of deliberations, which began on Wednesday.
He 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 on each count, although he is expected to be sentenced for the crimes simultaneously, rather than consecutively.
Follow live updates here.
“This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt,” Trump fumed to reporters afterward.
The verdict was read in Manhattan court, where Trump has been on trial since April 15. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a secret payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump looked down with narrowed eyes as the jury foreman read the word “guilty” for each count.
The judge thanked the jurors for their service in the weeks-long trial. “You have given this matter the attention it deserves and I want to thank you for that,” Judge Juan Merchan told them. Trump appeared to be scowling at jurors as they passed him on their way out of the courtroom.
Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, filed a motion for acquittal after the jury left the room, which the judge denied.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment on what kind of sentence he might seek, saying his office would speak in court documents.
“While this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we came to this trial and ultimately this verdict today the same way as any other case that comes through the courtroom doors – following the facts and the law in doing so , without fear or favor,” Bragg said. Asked about his reaction to the verdict, Bragg, who was inundated with threats from Trump supporters during the investigation, said: “I did my job. We did our job.”
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, immediately began raising funds through the news, posting on his website that he is “a political prisoner” and urging his followers to donate money.
Legal experts told NBC News that even if Trump is sentenced to prison time, he will likely be able to remain out of prison while he appeals the verdict, a process that could take months or longer. That means the sentence would likely not interfere with his ability to accept the Republican nomination for president at the July convention.
And it probably wouldn’t affect his ability to get elected. “There are no qualifications other than those in the Constitution,” said Chuck Rosenberg, a former U.S. attorney and legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC after Thursday’s ruling.
President Joe Biden’s campaign praised the verdict in a statement, but stressed that Trump needs to be defeated in November.
“Today in New York, we saw that no one is above the law,” said campaign communications director Michael Tyler, but the “verdict doesn’t change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There’s still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the polls.”
In his closing argument this week, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the jury that “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 maintained that the prosecutor’s office had no case and that there was no crime. “President Trump is innocent. He committed no crime,” Blanche said in her closing statement, arguing that the payments to Cohen were legitimate.
Prosecutors said the undercover payment to Cohen was part of a “long-running planned and coordinated conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal spending, to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior, using adulterated drugs. corporate records and bank forms to hide these payments along the way.”
“It was electoral fraud. Plain and simple,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said in his opening statement.
Although Trump was not charged with conspiracy, prosecutors argued that he caused the records to be falsified because he was trying to cover up a violation of state election law — and falsifying business records with the intent to cover another crime elevates the crime from a misdemeanor to a felony.
Trump was convicted after a sensational weeks-long trial that included combative testimony from Cohen, Trump’s self-described former fixer, and Daniels, who testified that she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 after meeting him at a golf tournament. celebrities. Trump denied her allegation and his lawyer suggested that Cohen act on his own because he thought it would make “the boss” happy.
Other witnesses included former White House officials, including counselor Hope Hicks, former Trump Organization executives and former National Enquirer editor David Pecker.
Trump did not appear on the witness stand to offer his own account of what happened, although he proclaimed before the trial began that he would “absolutely” testify. The defense’s star witness was Robert Costello, a lawyer Cohen considered hiring in 2018. Costello, who testified that Cohen told him Trump had nothing to do with paying the Daniels, infuriated Merchan by making disrespectful comments and faces on the stand. At one point, the judge cleared the courtroom during Costello’s testimony and threatened to hold him in contempt.
Cohen testified that he lied to Costello because he didn’t trust him and that he lied to others about Trump’s involvement at the time because he wanted to protect his former boss.
Cohen was the only witness to testify to Trump’s direct involvement in the $130,000 payment and subsequent repayment plan. Blanche spent days challenging her credibility, getting Cohen to acknowledge that he had a history of lying, including under oath.
Cohen said he received money from the Daniels in a series of payments from Trump throughout 2017, which the Trump Organization characterized as payments under a retainer agreement “for legal services rendered.”
Prosecutors said there was no such agreement and that Cohen’s version of events was supported by documentary evidence and witness testimony.
Blanche claimed that the series of checks that then-President Trump paid to Cohen in 2017 “was not retribution to Mr. Cohen for the money he gave Ms. Cohen.”
Testimony from Jeff McConney, a former senior vice president at Trump’s company, challenged that position. McConney said the company’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, told him that Cohen was being reimbursed for a $130,000 payment, and prosecutors entered Weisselberg’s handwritten notes on the payment formula as evidence. Cohen said Trump agreed to the deal in a meeting with him and Weisselberg just days before he was inaugurated as the 45th president.
Weisselberg did not testify. He is being held on perjury charges related to his testimony in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud case against Trump and his company. Cohen, McConney and other witnesses said Weisselberg, who spent decades working for Trump, often sought his approval for big spending.
In total, the prosecution called 20 witnesses, while the defense called two.
Trump has often falsely claimed that the allegations against him were a political fabrication orchestrated by Biden to keep him out of the campaign. But Trump was eventually able to take the campaign to court, welcoming top Republicans including House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Senators JD Vance of Ohio and Rick Scott of Florida as his court guests. Trump also took advantage of court breaks to deliver political messages to his supporters, while his surrogates got around Merchan’s gag order by attacking witnesses, individual prosecutors and Merchan’s daughter.
Merchan fined Trump $10,000 during the trial for violating his order, including attacking Cohen and Daniels, and warned he could arrest him if he continued violating the order.
Cohen celebrated the verdict in a post on X. “Today is an important day for accountability and the rule of law. Although it has been a difficult journey for me and my family, the truth always matters,” Cohen wrote.
Trump was indicted in March last year following a years-long investigation by Bragg and his predecessor, Cyrus Vance. The charges were the first brought against a former president, although Trump has previously been charged and pleaded not guilty in three other cases. None of the three — a federal election interference case in Washington, D.C., a state election interference case in Georgia and a federal case alleging he mishandled classified documents and national security information — appears likely to go to trial before the presidential elections on November 5th.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
