Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) declined to comment at a press conference on Thursday whether prosecutors would seek prison time for former President Trump following his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up an extramarital affair.
Asked about seeking a prison sentence for Trump, Bragg said prosecutors would make that statement through court documents in the coming weeks.
“The only voice that matters is the voice of the jury, and the jury has spoken,” Bragg said.
Asked how he felt now that the verdict had been handed down, he said: “I’ve done my job.”
“While this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we approached this case the same way we approach every case that comes before our courts, and that ultimately leads to this verdict today: we followed the facts and the law without fear or favoritism,” Bragg said.
The district attorney was joined by his entire trial team from his Manhattan office, who have spent the past few weeks trying to convince jurors that the former president was responsible for falsifying business records.
While most people remained calm, prosecutor Becky Mangold appeared to radiate pride, and Bragg’s paralegals, two of whom testified at the trial, stood alongside him during the news conference.
The room where Bragg held his news conference was less crowded than the courtroom where Trump had been convicted an hour earlier, with reporters crowded around the podium where the district attorney spoke.
Bragg had walked into the building just a few minutes earlier from the courthouse across the street. He and his trial team gathered in the hallway outside for a moment, smiling and discussing the sentence for a moment, before going inside.
“The 12 jurors took an oath to reach a verdict based on the evidence and the law, and the evidence and the law alone,” Bragg said.
“After deliberations, we have reached a unanimous conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that Defendant Donald J. Trump is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree in order to conceal a plot to rig the 2016 election.”
Trump, the first former president to be convicted of a felony, has frequently attacked Bragg since his indictment more than a year ago, saying local prosecutors had brought the case as politically motivated.
The allegations stem from allegations that Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen was repaid for payments he made to porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump, which Daniels denies.
In comments made shortly after the verdict was read on Thursday, the former president criticized both Bragg and Judge Juan Marchan, who presided over the case, saying “we did nothing wrong.”
“I’m a completely innocent man, and that’s fine,” he said. “I’m fighting for my country. I’m fighting for the Constitution.”
“This has been a rigged verdict from day one. It was decided by a conflicted-interest judge who should never have been allowed to try this case. It should never have been allowed,” Trump continued. “We will fight for the Constitution. This case is far from over. Thank you very much.”
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