President Trump reacts to the verdict:
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 30, 2024
“The whole country is being rigged right now. This is being done by the Biden Administration in order to hurt or wound a political opponent."
"We'll fight to the end and we'll win...this is long from over." pic.twitter.com/G93N5ZwiBH
dailycaller | A jury in the deep-blue New York City borough of Manhattan convicted former President Donald Trump on Thursday in the case brought by Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Trump was convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records charged in Bragg’s indictment. Defense attorneys cornered the prosecution’s witnesses at critical junctures of the trial in a case that stood on shaky legal grounds from the start, including when Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen, an admitted liar, took the stand as the prosecution’s star witness, a choice that resulted in Cohen revealing he stole from the Trump organization and committing what the defense demonstrated was potentially another act of perjury.
The charges stemmed from $420,000 Trump paid Cohen over 12 months in 2017 for “legal services,” which prosecutors argued was actually to reimburse Cohen for $130,000 he paid to secure a nondisclosure agreement with porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election and keep her quiet about claims of an affair with Trump.
To indict Trump on felony charges and circumvent the expired statute of limitations, Bragg had to claim the records were falsified to conceal or commit another crime — which remained unclear throughout the trial but was assumed to be either a campaign finance or election law violation.
Prosecutors argued Trump engaged in a conspiracy to influence the 2016 election by paying to suppress stories of former Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin, former Playboy model Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels. They suggested he violated a state election law that makes it a misdemeanor for any two or more people to “conspire” to influence an election using “unlawful means.”
Trump is the first former U.S. president to be convicted at a criminal trial. His sentencing is scheduled for July 11th, days before the Republican National Convention set to begin on July 15. Falsifying business record charges carry a maximum sentence of four years in prison.
The jury began its deliberations on Wednesday after Judge Juan Merchan read the jury instructions, which did not require jurors to agree on what “unlawful” means Trump allegedly used to influence the election.
Bragg’s team included Matthew Colangelo, who spent two years as a top official in the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ). While previously working at the New York District Attorney’s office, Colangelo also led both the investigation that culminated in the Trump Foundation’s dissolution and the investigation that later became Trump’s civil fraud case.
Colangelo joined the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as senior counsel in 2022 while Bragg was still investigating Trump.
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