A convicted felon (on 34 counts) is running for President of the United States

The sentencing is on July 11, 2024. This is also the first time in United States history that a president has been convicted of a felony.

Here is NBC News:

A New York jury has found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — the first time a former U.S. president has been convicted of a crime.

The verdict was read in the Manhattan courtroom where Trump has been on trial since April 15. He had pleaded not guilty to all 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 his eyes narrowed as the jury foreperson read the word “guilty” to each count.

The jury reached its verdict after 9.5 hours of deliberations, which began Wednesday. 

The historic conviction comes as Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

The judge thanked the jurors for their service in the weeks-long trial. “You gave this matter the attention it deserved, and I want to thank you for that,” Judge Juan Merchan told them.

Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche made a motion for acquittal after the jury left the room, which the judge denied.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the jury in his closing arguments earlier this week 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 had maintained the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had no case and that there had been no crime. “President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes,” Blanche said in his closing statement, arguing the payments to Cohen were legitimate.

Prosecutors said the disguised payment to Cohen was 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.”

“It was election fraud. Pure and simple,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said in his opening statement.

While Trump was not charged with conspiracy, prosecutors argued 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 raises the offense from a misdemeanor to a felony. 

The verdict came 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 celebrity golf tournament. Trump has denied her claim, and his attorney had suggested that Cohen acted on his own because he thought it would make “the boss” happy.

Other witnesses included former White House staffers including advisor Hope Hicks, former Trump Organization executives, and former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker.  

Trump did not take the witness stand to offer his own account of what happened, despite proclaiming before the trial began that he would “absolutely” testify. The defense’s main witness was Robert Costello, a lawyer who Cohen considered retaining in 2018. Costello, who testified that Cohen had told him Trump had nothing to do with the Daniels’ payment, enraged Judge Juan Merchan by making disrespectful comments and faces on the stand. At one point, the judge cleared the courtroom at one poduring 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’d lied to others about Trump’s involvement at the time because he wanted to protect his former boss.

Read the rest here.

Here is CNN on the Trump response after he left the courthouse:

“Our whole country is being rigged right now,” Trump told reporters after leaving the courtroom. “This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent.” 

“We’ll keep fighting, we’ll fight til the end and we’ll win because our country’s gone to hell,” Trump said, adding “we don’t have the same country anymore, we have a divided mess.”

“We didn’t do a thing wrong. I’m a very innocent man”

“Real verdict is going to be November 5 by the people”

“They know what happened here and everybody knows what happened here”