(Ken Silva, Headline USA) GOP nominee and 2024 presidential frontrunner Donald Trump became the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes Thursday as a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election.
Jurors convicted Trump on all 34 counts after deliberating for 9.5 hours, following a roughly four-week trial marred in controversy.
“This is far from over,” Trump said outside the courthouse following the guilty verdict.
"This was a disgrace."
Donald Trump Responds To Guilty Verdict. pic.twitter.com/G12jHy91RH
— INFOWARS (@infowars) May 30, 2024
The verdict exposes him Trump to potential prison time ahead of the 2024 election.
The trial featured more than four weeks of occasionally riveting testimony. Trump himself did not testify, but jurors heard his voice through a secret recording of a conversation with his former lawyer, the disgraced Michael Cohen, in which they discussed a $150,000 payment involving Playboy model Stormy Daniels.
Cohen, the star prosecution witness who pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges related to the payments, also testified—committing perjury in the process, according to his own former attorney, Robert Costello.
Costello accused Cohen of perjury at a congressional hearing the day after his former client testified.
“I explained that if Cohen had truthful information that would implicate Donald Trump, I could get him out of his legal troubles by the end of the week, if he cooperated against Donald Trump,” Costello said earlier this month, explaining that he can talk about his private discussions with Cohen because he waved his attorney-client privilege when he cooperated against Trump.
“Cohen said to me: ‘I swear to God, Bob, I don’t have anything on Donald Trump.’ Cohen must have said this at least ten times because I kept coming back to it from different approaches. Cohen kept on saying: ‘Guys I want you to remember, I will do whatever the fuck I have to do, I will never spend one day in jail.’”
However, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s reliance on a witness with such a checkered past — he was disbarred, went to prison and separately pleaded guilty to lying about a Moscow real estate project on Trump’s behalf — apparently didn’t hurt them with the jury.
The internet immediately exploded with chatter upon the announcement.
“I obviously disagree with this verdict as do many others. I believe that the case will be reversed eventually either in the state or federal systems. However, this was the worst expectation for a trial in Manhattan,” said constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley.
I obviously disagree with this verdict as do many others. I believe that the case will be reversed eventually either in the state or federal systems. However, this was the worst expectation for a trial in Manhattan. I am saddened by the result more for the New York legal system…
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 30, 2024
“I am saddened by the result more for the New York legal system than the former president. I had hoped that the jurors might redeem the integrity of a system that has been used for political purposes.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
