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Trump in handcuffs.
Trump's guilty verdict is a historic first, but will it matter?
You knew it, I knew it, everybody knew it. But now it’s on the record: Donald Trump is officially a crook.
Last Thursday, after two days of deliberations, a jury of his peers unanimously found the former president and 2024 Republican presumptive nominee guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the hush money criminal case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Bragg charged Trump with cooking the books to hide a $130,000 payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels – with whom he’d allegedly had an affair – from voters during the 2016 election campaign by disguising it as legal fees to his then-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.
Falsifying business records is normally a misdemeanor, but Bragg, an elected Democrat in deep-blue Manhattan, had campaigned on putting Trump in cuffs. To upgrade the charges to felonies, he drew on a controversial legal theory to claim that the records were falsified in an attempt to commit or conceal an underlying federal crime of the jury’s choice. Judging by the outcome, the gambit worked – although it also helped further politicize and delegitimize the case and could make the conviction vulnerable to reversal on appeal.
The verdict marks a watershed moment for American democracy. Trump is the first-ever former American president convicted of a crime. He is also the first major-party candidate to run for the White House as a felon. Of course, these are far from the only unprecedented things happening in the US political system. From Trump’s two impeachments and acquittals to chronic Congressional gridlock to recurring House Speaker succession drama to the Jan. 6 insurrection, we’re living through an era of exceptional yet increasingly normalized political dysfunction that is fraying our social fabric and eroding the legitimacy of our democracy. At some point, something’s going to break, and it’s not going to be pretty.
The legal consequences for Trump will be minimal. He will appeal his conviction. This will probably take years to resolve, and it may well succeed given the dubious legal theory used to prosecute him.
But before an appeal can be filed, Judge Juan Merchan is set to decide on sentencing on July 11. While each count carries a maximum of 4 years in prison, even a single day in jail is probably not in the cards for a first-time nonviolent offender like him, with house arrest or small fines more likely punishments. And even if he were sentenced to prison, he would not be remanded until the last of his appeals were exhausted, which would not happen until well after the election.
Notably, the New York trial was by far the weakest and least serious of all the criminal cases Trump faced. The three that remain – the Fulton County election interference case, the federal election interference case, and the federal classified documents case – are orders of magnitude more consequential, but none is expected to start before September if at all this year. Should he win in November, he won’t be able to pardon himself of the New York convictions, but he will be able to quash the two federal indictments and at least postpone the Georgia trial until he’s out of office.
Odds are that the 34 guilty verdicts will be the only legal accountability Trump will see before the election – and perhaps ever.
What about the impact on the election itself? First things first: The conviction won’t affect Trump’s ability to run for or serve as president, even on the off chance that he was put behind bars. Nor will it stop him from voting (for himself), unless he is incarcerated by Election Day. But will it make it less likely that Trump wins in November? Probably, but only just a little.
The reason it might dent Trump’s chances at the margin is that a non-negligible share of independent voters had consistently said they would be less likely to vote for Trump if he was convicted of a crime. And presidential elections in our highly polarized country are increasingly decided by a few tens of thousands of them in a handful of states. Even small losses among this group can end up being pivotal.
That said, there are reasons why this may not end up mattering much.
First, the election is still five months away. Think about all that can happen between now and then. If the first half of the year is anything to go by, I suspect the 34 guilty verdicts are going to feel like a distant memory by the time voters go to the ballot.
Second, the conviction will rally Republicans around Trump and mobilize Democrats to some extent (i.e., partisans are gonna partisan), but the number of undecided voters among whom this particular issue will actually move the needle in November is small. Most Americans are more focused on pocketbook issues, immigration, abortion, and President Joe Biden’s age than on Trump’s legal issues or the threat he poses to US democracy. This is true today and will likely be true in November.
Third, independents who were open to voting for Trump before last Thursday will probably learn to grow comfortable with a criminal conviction the same way they got over the Access Hollywood tape, the Stormy Daniels affair, the Charlottesville rally, and the “Stop the Steal” movement. If these Trump-leaning voters were willing to forgive so many sordid transgressions, there’s little reason to believe a guilty verdict on trumped-up white-collar charges is going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Although the guilty verdicts are bad news for the former president, this remains a very close race that Trump is still slightly favored to win against a historically unpopular incumbent. But in a game of inches, any headwinds could be enough to make a difference.A flow chart of possible outcomes to Trump's hush money case
Graphic Truth: How will Trump's hush money trial end?
After weeks of witness testimony in what is likely the only criminal case Donald Trump will face before November’s election, the jury heard closing arguments in the New York hush money trial on Tuesday.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 payment made to former adult entertainment star Stormy Daniels to ensure she did not go public about their alleged sexual encounter before the 2016 election. Under New York law, falsifying business records on its own is a misdemeanor but can be considered a felony if done to hide another crime. If the prosecution can prove that Trump did so to protect his 2016 campaign, then he could find himself in hot water.
Trump’s defensesought to convince the jury that the prosecution’s case relied entirely on an untrustworthy and vindictive Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer who claims he made the payment to Daniels on the former president’s orders.
The prosecution took on the defense’s argument directly, highlighting that much of their evidence relies not on Cohen, but on phone records and the testimony of witnesses who are friendly to Trump.
Outside the courthouse, the Biden campaign directly engaged with Trump’s trials for the first time, staging a news conference with “Goodfellas” actor Robert De Niro and a pair of former police officers. They attempted to hammer home the president’s core reelection argument: That Trump is a threat to Democracy. But this also fueled claims from Trump’s team that the trial is politically motivated.
What’s next? After closing arguments wrap up, the jury could begin deliberations as soon as Wednesday morning. There is no time limit on how long they can take to reach a decision, but all 12 jurors must agree for the judge to accept it. That leaves a lot of room for uncertainty. Here’s how the trial could play out from here.Former U.S. President Donald Trump returns from a break at Manhattan criminal court in New York, U.S., on Monday, April 15, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Trump’s independent voters, Supreme Court's refusal to hear protest case, Singapore’s new PM, Samsung’s new chipmaking hub, Tesla’s layoffs, Beijing’s half marathon scandal
36: A recent poll found that 36% of voters registered as independent would be “less likely to support [Donald] Trump” if he’s convicted on any of the 34 felony charges in the so-called hush money case now underway in New York City.
3: On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it will not hear a case from the Fifth Circuit Court that effectively eliminated the right to protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. This leaves the lower court's decision – which ruled that a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act – in place, jeopardizing the First Amendment right to protest in these three southern US states.
20: After nearly 20 years in power, Lee Hsien Loong, son of Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew, will step down on May 15 as prime minister. Deputy PM and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong, Lee’s heir apparent for the past two years, will take the job. After almost six decades of political dominance by the People’s Action Party, Singapore may have its first genuinely competitive elections as early as later this year as the party becomes less popular.
6.4 billion: To boost US domestic production of semiconductors, the Biden administration will give up to $6.4 billion in grants to Samsung, one of the world’s largest chipmakers, to finance a new manufacturing hub and expand an existing site in Texas.
10: On Monday, electric vehicle maker Tesla announced plans to lay off more than 10% of its workforce (about 14,000 people) to cut costs, and a longtime senior executive announced his resignation. Meanwhile, EV makers in Asia and Europe have been producing a growing number of new models.
3: Organizers of the Beijing half marathon are investigating video footage shared online that appears to show three East African runners allowing a Chinese competitor to win the race. It’s not clear why the two Kenyans and one Ethiopian might have done this.
Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Trump charged in document case
The US Justice Department took the mammoth step Thursday of handing down federal criminal charges against former President Donald Trump. The indictment relates to his alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Florida estate.
This is a huge deal, marking the first time in history that a former US president has been charged with a federal crime.
While the indictment itself has not yet been made public, it's been widely reported that Trump was charged with seven counts, including violating the Espionage Act, making false statements, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
This all relates to a 2022 probe from when the National Archives, the custodian of historical records, took back some 15 boxes of documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate that should have been handed in at the end of his term. They then found that the former president and his lawyers, who had been stonewalling efforts to retrieve the documents, had more files stashed in Florida, resulting in an FBI raid on his Florida property last August.
Trump, for his part, took to his social media platform last night and exclaimed in his vintage all caps “I’M INNOCENT!”
What happens now? The former president confirmed that he must appear in court in Miami on Tuesday, though it is very hard to know how long it will take for this case to go to trial. Trump is notorious for dragging out litigation, and the pretrial process in this case could take a very long time. Still, if convicted, he could face a prison term, though this would not preclude him from running for president. But running a campaign from prison would certainly be unchartered territory.
The politics of it all will be the thing to watch. When Trump was found liable for sexual assault early last month, it only further galvanized his base and reinforced his narrative of grievance. It seems likely that here too the former president may use this legal spectacle to fundraise for his 2024 presidential campaign, which worked a treat last time. It was dubbed the “indictment bump.”
The situation is particularly tricky, however, for his GOP rivals. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has so far had a tough time standing up to Trump in a way that doesn’t isolate his adoring base, took to Twitter to condemn the weaponization of the legal system. But as the 2024 race heats up, others seeking the GOP nomination will have to contend with Trump again sucking up all the media oxygen. They will also have to take a stance on Trump’s serious legal troubles in ways that don't isolate the GOP base or independent voters tired of Trump’s drama – a very tall order!