Trump First Ex-President Convicted of Felonies

It was the first time a former U.S. president was ever tried or convicted in a criminal case, and was the first of Trump’s four indictments to reach trial.

Prosecutors accused Trump of falsifying internal business records to cover up hush money payments tied to an alleged scheme to bury stories that might torpedo his 2016 White House bid.

At the heart of the charges were reimbursements paid to Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in exchange for not going public with her claim about a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.

Prosecutors said the reimbursements were falsely logged as “legal expenses” to hide the true nature of the transactions.

The charges Trump faces are punishable by up to four years in prison. He has denied any wrongdoing and had pleaded not guilty.

Judge Juan M. Merchan has set Trump’s sentencing for July 11.

— How Trump’s conviction affects the 2024 presidential race

— What to know about the guilty verdict in Trump’s hush money trial

— Inside the courtroom as Trump learned he’d been convicted

— Republican lawmakers come to Trump’s defense after his conviction

— Shares in Trump Media slump after former president’s conviction

— Trump hush money case: A timeline of key events

— Trump investigations: The status of the cases brought against him

Defense lawyer Todd Blanche told CNN Thursday evening that Donald Trump wanted to testify in the trial, but “he listened to us and he relied on our counsel and he reached a decision that he thought was right.”

“Of course he wanted to testify. And I don’t say that because that’s what he has said,” Blanche said. “He wanted to get his story out.”

Blanche pointed to Judge Juan M. Merchan’s rulings about what could be asked of Trump if he took the stand, saying “some of those questions were really complicated to answer because there’s still appeals going on.”

“I don’t think there was a conviction because he did not take the stand,” Blanche added.

Asked why the defense didn’t call as witnesses former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller and former Trump company finance chief Allen Weisselberg — whose names came up repeatedly during testimony — Blanche responded: “Because we happen to live in America and we don’t have the burden of proof.” He said the question should be why the prosecution didn’t call them.

Exonerated “Central Park Five” member and current New York City Councilmember Yusef Salaam said he didn’t take pleasure in the former president’s guilty verdict “even though Donald Trump wanted me executed even when it was proven that I was innocent.”

Salaam won a seat on the City Council last year decades after being wrongly imprisoned for rape in a notorious case that roiled racial tensions in New York City in the late 1980s. At the time, Trump took out large newspaper advertisements calling for New York to reinstate the death penalty. Salaam, along with four other Black and Latino men, eventually had their convictions vacated in 2002.

“We should be proud that today the system worked. But we should be somber that we Americans have an ex-President who has been found guilty on 34 separate felony charges,” Salaam wrote in a post on the social media platform X.

“We have to do better than this. Because we are better than this,” Salaam said.

Former Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance offered his congratulations Thursday to his successor, Alvin Bragg, on “conducting a nearly flawless trial in a very difficult situation.”

“I think it’s an important case that really helps define what the rule of law is supposed to mean,” Vance told The Associated Press.

The DA’s office investigated Trump while Vance had the top job, but did not bring any charges before the Democrat retired at the end of 2021 and Bragg took over.

Responding to claims from a former prosecutor that some in his office had called it a “zombie” case, Vance said he didn’t think he had ever referred to it that way. He said he wouldn’t go into the conversations he had with his staff about the case.

Vance said he doesn’t think it’s likely Trump will be sentenced to prison time in the Manhattan case, both because “the crimes don’t require it” and because it would be more trouble than it’s worth given Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

“The idea of having him in custody is really hard to imagine, I think, given his role in the political theater of the country for the next six months,” Vance said.

Trump campaign advisers argued the case would help them motivate their core supporters. So many donations came into WinRed, the platform the campaign uses for fundraising, that it crashed. Aides quickly worked to set up a backup platform to collect money pouring in.

His two most senior campaign advisers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, were not with him in New York, but in Palm Beach, Florida, where the campaign is headquartered.

And while it may take days or weeks to know for sure, Trump’s critics in both parties generally agreed that there may not be much political fallout, although some were hopeful that the convictions would have at least a marginal impact in what will likely be a close election.

Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s lawyer in his hush money trial, said in an interview after the verdict that he expects to appeal the trial judge’s decision not to recuse himself.

Asked on Fox News on Thursday night if he thought Trump got a fair trial, Blanche responded: “No, I don’t think so.”

Trump and his lawyers repeatedly argued Judge Juan M. Merchan should not have presided over the case, suggesting he had shown signs of bias.

Donald Trump left Trump Tower shortly before 8 p.m. Thursday night to attend a fundraiser at a private residence in New York City, according to a person familiar with his plans who was not authorized to speak publicly.

The fundraiser, held at a private residence in Manhattan, had been scheduled by his campaign before it was known that a verdict would be coming Thursday.

Trump’s in-person event came as the campaign’s online fundraising platform briefly crashed shortly after the verdict came down. It was back up and running Thursday night.

Associated Press writer Michelle Price contributed to this story from New York.

The big question now is whether Donald Trump could go to prison. The answer is uncertain.

Judge Juan M. Merchan set sentencing for July 11, just days before Republicans are set to formally nominate him for president.

The charge of falsifying business records is a Class E felony in New York, the lowest tier of felony charges in the state. It is punishable by up to four years in prison, though the punishment would ultimately be up to the judge and there’s no guarantee he would give Trump time bars.

After Donald Trump is sentenced, he can challenge his conviction in an appellate division of New York state’s trial court and possibly, the state’s highest court. His lawyers have already been laying the groundwork for appeals with objections to the charges and rulings at trial.

The defense has accused the judge in the trial of bias, citing his daughter’s work heading a firm whose clients have included President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats. The judge refused the defense’s request to remove himself from the case, saying he was certain of his “ability to be fair and impartial.”

Trump’s lawyers may also raise on appeal the judge’s ruling limiting the testimony of a potential defense expert witness. The defense wanted to call Bradley Smith, a Republican law professor who served on the Federal Election Commission, to rebut the prosecution’s contention that the hush money payments amounted to campaign finance violations.

But the defense ended up not having him testify after the judge ruled he could give general background on the FEC but couldn’t interpret how federal campaign finance laws apply to the facts of Trump’s case or opine on whether Trump’s alleged actions violate those laws.

There are often guardrails around expert testimony on legal matters, on the basis that it’s up to a judge — not an expert hired by one side or the other — to instruct jurors on applicable laws.

The defense may also argue that jurors were improperly allowed to hear sometimes graphic testimony from porn actor Stormy Daniels about her alleged sexual encounter with him in 2006. The defense unsuccessfully pushed for a mistrial over the tawdry details prosecutors elicited from Daniels.

Defense lawyer Todd Blanche argued Daniels’ description of a power imbalance with the older, taller Trump, was a “dog whistle for rape,” irrelevant to the charges at hand, and “the kind of testimony that makes it impossible to come back from.”

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — Following Thursday’s guilty verdict in Donald Trump’s hush money trial, public reaction varied. Some criticized the trial and the jury’s verdict while others felt it was the right outcome.

“Put him away where he belongs,” said Roy Chilton, 76, a tourist from South Africa who was visiting Oklahoma City’s Bricktown entertainment district with his wife, Celia Chilton.

Both said they were concerned about the impact that a Trump presidency would have on their home country’s trade with the U.S.

Celia Chilton said the guilty verdict confirms that in the U.S., no one is above the law.

“We feel that the U.S. justice system is better than ours,” she said.

MADISON, Wis. — Sharon Radbil Cooper, a 67-year-old retired special education teacher from Madison, Wisconsin, said her phone had been blowing up with messages after the verdict in Donald Trump’s criminal trial was announced.

She said she was afraid jurors wouldn’t see how serious Trump’s offenses were but they made the right decision in convicting him, proving the criminal justice system can still “respond intelligently.”

“I believe in accountability,” Radbil Cooper said. “People need to be held accountable for what they’ve done.” She said there’s no good label for her political leanings but she has always planned to vote for President Joe Biden because she feels that he’s honest. But she’s afraid the conviction won’t be enough to keep people from voting for Trump.

“My hope is the bloc of voters who are not informed will move in the direction of not voting for him,” she said.

Michigan’s top congressional and statewide leaders were gathered on Mackinac Island for a policy conference as news of the guilty verdict in Donald Trump’s criminal trial broke.

The situation created a surreal scene of many politicians reacting in real time next to journalists, island visitors and lawmakers from across the aisle.