(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Not even “boobs” could outpace “donate to Trump” after the 2024 presidential frontrunner was convicted on highly politicized fraud charges Thursday, according to a Google Analytics screenshot shared online.
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) May 31, 2024
“Donate to Trump” reached an all-time high in interest after a New York jury announced its verdict against Trump on Thursday—convicting him on all 34 counts after deliberating for 9.5 hours, following a roughly four-week trial marred in controversy.
Donations to Trump were felt through more than internet searches. According to CNBC, Trump’s campaign said it raised $34.8 million from small-dollar donors in less than seven hours.
Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group also reacted wildly to the news of the guilty verdict.
After rising more than 2% at the opening of trading Friday, the shares ended the day down 5.3%.
The stock has tripled this year, in the process frequently making double-digit percentage moves either higher or lower on a single day. It peaked at nearly $80 in intraday trading on March 26. For context, the S&P 500 is up almost 10% year to date.
Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records at his company in connection with an alleged scheme to hide potentially embarrassing stories about him during his 2016 Republican presidential election campaign.
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.
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, which found Trump guilty on all counts.
“This is far from over,” Trump said outside the courthouse following the guilty verdict.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
