Donald Trump became the first US president to be convicted of a crime when a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.
After deliberations over two days, the 12-member jury announced it had found Trump guilty on all 34 counts he faced, news agency Reuters reported. Unanimity was required for any verdict.
Republicans are backing the former President.
“Today is a shameful day in American history,” said Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker. “This was a purely political exercise, not a legal one. The weaponization of our justice system has been a hallmark of the Biden administration, and the decision today is further evidence that Democrats will stop at nothing to silence dissent and crush their political opponents.”
Justice Juan Merchan set sentencing for July 11, days before the July 15 start of the Republican National Convention expected to formally nominate Trump for president.
Merchan thanked the jurors for their service. “Nobody can make you do anything you don’t want to do. The choice is yours,” Merchan said.
The verdict plunges the United States into unexplored territory ahead of the November 5 presidential election, when Trump, the Republican candidate, will try to win the White House back from Democratic President Joe Biden.
He faces a maximum sentence of four years in prison, though others convicted of that crime often receive shorter sentences, fines or probation. Incarceration would not prevent him from campaigning, or taking office if he were to win.
He will not be jailed ahead of sentencing. Trump, 77, has denied wrongdoing and was expected to appeal.
Trump claims he is ‘innocent’ and condemns what he calls a ‘rigged’ trial; sentencing to come days before Republican National Convention
Congressman Jim Jordan, the pugnacious rightwing Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, similarly bemoaned the verdict as “a travesty of justice”, adding: “The Manhattan kangaroo court shows what happens when our justice system is weaponized by partisan prosecutors in front of a biased judge with an unfair process.”
Some of Trump’s advisers and family members were even more blunt in their assessment of the verdict. “Such bullshit,” Donald Trump Jr, the former president’s eldest son, wrote on Twitter/X.
A number of Trump’s allies predicted the conviction would be reversed on appeal and would only mobilize Republican voters in the election, while at least one lawmaker suggested the verdict would set a dangerous precedent.
"It was a historic moment in which the US joined other democracies in showing the world it is willing to hold its political leaders to account. It also represents an earthquake in a presidential election where poll after poll shows Trump to be the marginal favourite over incumbent Joe Biden, despite the president’s efforts to move the needle.
If this doesn’t do it, perhaps nothing will," says an analysis piece in London-based 'The Guardian'.
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