Less clear is his political fallout from Thursday’s verdict as American voters from Boston to Boulder and foreign leaders from Beijing to Brussels game out the implications of a second Trump presidency.
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New York jury finds Donald Trump guilty on all counts in hush money trial
New York jury finds Donald Trump guilty on all counts in hush money trial
Trump appeared rattled when the results were announced. But analysts question whether his weeks in court – away from the campaign trail often looking sullen, angry and even sleepy – has hurt him among his loyal base.
Since the indictment was brought in April 2023, Trump has framed the case as a vindictive political “witch hunt” filed in a Democratic-dominated state, overseen by a “corrupt” judge and fanned by “fake news” media.
This follows a long-standing Trump playbook of discrediting opponents and dulling in advance the impact of any expected bad news. He has similarly framed three other criminal cases against him – two federal and one in the state of Georgia, none expected to go to trial before the November presidential election – as witch hunts.
While supporters of the verdict heralded it as a sign that US legal machinery ultimately works, even against a former US president and billionaire real estate developer, the case has been twined with politics from the start.
Trump’s sentencing on July 11, where he faces strictures ranging from probation to four years in prison, comes just four days before the start of the Republican National Convention, where Trump is expected to be nominated.
Nothing in the US Constitution prevents a convicted felon from running for the presidency.
Critics of the verdict, meanwhile, framed it as evidence of legal overreach.
Within minutes of the verdict being read, Trump’s re-election campaign leaned into the outcome, sending out an appeal for campaign contributions for their “political prisoner” candidate that read: “I was just convicted in a RIGGED political Witch Hunt trial: I DID NOTHING WRONG!”
His loyal base showed no sign of wavering in the very tight race between Trump and US President Joe Biden, who is seeking a second term. Shortly after the verdict, Silicon Valley technology investor Shaun Maguire posted on social media site X that he had donated US$300,000 to support Trump, while hotelier Robert Bigelow told Reuters he would go ahead with a promised US$5 million contribution.
The Trump campaign on Friday announced that it raised US$35 million since the verdict.
As a first-time felon with no criminal record in a relatively low-level white-collar case, Trump is unlikely to receive jail time. But even probation limits his campaigning if he were sentenced to house arrest and required to wear an ankle bracelet.
Trump has vowed to appeal, a process that could take months or years. The case centred on a controversial legal premise: that a US$130,000 payment to an adult film star was a form of campaign contribution – a misdemeanour – while the falsifying of 34 business records concealed a second crime, a conspiracy to help his 2016 campaign by unlawful means, which elevated each count to a felony.
That complexity could provide fuel any appeal, legal experts said.
With the US electorate deeply divided, and his base firmly on side, the spotlight turns to the small slice of wavering or undecided Americans.
“The likely effect of the case, however it goes, is negligible,” said Todd Belt, a political-science professor at George Washington University after the verdict’s release. “A sliver of likely voters said it may impact their vote.
However, I think that likely voters’ opinions about Donald Trump are highly crystallised at this point and this poll overstates potential movement. There are very few “persuadables”.
One thing both candidates agree on, as does the US constitution: the ultimate decision in the November US presidential election rests with voters. The nation’s framing documents lay out only two requirements: that candidates are born in the US and are at least 35 years old.
“The real verdict is going to be November 5 by the people, and they know what happened here,” Trump said outside the courtroom.
A few minutes later, Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler made a similar statement: “There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president”.
Trump faces three other criminal cases beyond this one brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Those involve another 54 felony counts, are grounded in more conventional criminal law and have been delayed pending various Trump appeals.
The third, a Georgia case, similarly alleges Trump’s election interference in that state and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The New York and Georgia cases are particularly consequential for Trump given. If he is re-elected, he could presumably direct the Justice Department to shut down the federal cases. But that option does not exist in state-level cases. Nor could he commute or pardon himself in convictions issued by state courts.
Additional reporting by Rob Delaney