TTrump, a former President of the United States and a likely Republican candidate in the 2024 election, has now been convicted 34 times. On Thursday in New York, a 12-person jury found Donald Trump guilty of falsifying business records in order to influence the 2016 election. This marks Trump’s first criminal conviction, as he also faces felony charges in three ongoing criminal cases in Florida, Georgia and Washington DC. Trump will be the first former president to stand trial on criminal charges.
The jury found that Trump, who denies the charges, falsified business records in 2016 and 2017 when he made a series of payments to his lawyer and intermediary Michael Cohen to repay $130,000 he paid porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about her 2006 sexual encounter with Trump. Prosecutors had argued that paying Daniels to keep quiet amounted to a conspiracy to influence the election. Labeling the payments to Cohen as payments for Cohen’s “lawyers’ fees,” as Trump and his associates did, was a fraudulent stunt to further that conspiracy.
The trial, which lasted more than six weeks, has heavily sidelined Trump’s campaign and drained funds from both his reelection bid and the Republican National Committee. To pay attorney’s feesUnable to travel to battleground states because of court appearances he must make in Manhattan, Trump has made a series of bizarre attempts in overwhelmingly Democratic states to drum up support and draw more attention: He held a rally in the Bronx. A strange visit to a liquor store.
Meanwhile, Trump’s antics in and out of court often threatened to undermine the trial. He repeatedly violated gag orders, publicly disparaged the judge and his daughter and racked up thousands of dollars in fines. He summoned other Republican politicians to his courtroom, all dressed like him, to pay a kind of creepy homage and spout abuse on his behalf.
These theatrical performances aside, Trump appears to have contributed to his conviction by interfering with his lawyers’ work. Throughout the trial, his defense team desperately tried to make unlikely and irrelevant claims, such as that Trump never actually had sex with Daniels, but these unsuccessfully wasted time and obfuscated what little argument there was. They appear to have done this at Trump’s own direction.
On the merits of the courtroom, it didn’t matter much. The only way Trump could have been acquitted was if the jury was too afraid to convict a former president. Based on what they saw in court, there was no way they could legally acquit him. The jury deliberated for just 10 hours and, apparently unwavering, returned a guilty verdict.
Trump is a convicted felon but remains free and is unlikely to face any prison time because those convictions do not require prison time. His sentence is set to be handed down on July 11, just days before the start of the Republican National Convention.
The ruling adds a new variable to the ongoing presidential race. Enraged right-wingers, whose media have already spent months trying to delegitimize the New York trial as a political witch hunt, will be shouting accusations and trying to raise funds. Some liberals, who expect defeat like an abused dog expecting to be hit by an outstretched arm, will also be sitting idly by, worried that the ruling will somehow backfire in Trump’s favor.
Don’t believe it. The conviction of a very powerful and law-breaking former president is a pure good thing. It’s good for the Biden campaign, which needed a boost as the economy worsened and the president’s continued support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza angered voters. But it’s also good for the democratic process, which can now move forward in November fully armed with the very kind of information Trump’s hush-money scheme tried to hide in 2016: evidence of the veracity of his character.
And that’s very good news for the American state apparatus, which has long been reluctant to hold Trump accountable for his many crimes. It long seemed that no one would hold Trump to justice, partly because of Republican control of the courts and partly because of abject institutional cowardice. His money, shamelessness, and worship of influence virtually placed him above the law. A jury of New York citizens found otherwise.
There are many reasons why Trump should go to prison, but he will never go to prison. He should go to prison for what he did on January 6th. He should go to prison for what he did to immigrant families. If justice is to be served, he will go to prison for what he did to E. Jean Carroll and the 24 other women who have accused him of sexual assault. He may never go to prison, and we have a long way to go before true justice is served.
But for those of us who despaired that this day would ever come – those of us who convinced ourselves that it was childish and naive to think that he would be convicted – today is a very good day. We can, above all, rejoice that we were wrong.
