Donald Trump now a convicted felon after guilty verdict

The conviction means Donald Trump could be returned to the White House months after a judge has decided whether or not to imprison him.

Donald Trump has been convicted of fraud by a New York jury that declared him guilty on 34 charges of falsifying business records to conceal a payment made to a porn star during his tumultuous 2016 campaign for the White House.

The verdict made him the first former president in American history to be convicted in a criminal court. It came in the midst of a presidential campaign, sometimes conducted in a gloomy courthouse corridor, in which Trump, 77, could be returned to the White House months after a judge has decided whether or not to send him to jail.

Speaking outside the courtroom, Trump condemned the trial and “corrupt” Judge Juan Merchan.

“This was a rigged, disgraceful trial. And the real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people. And they know what happened here and everybody knows what happened here,” he said.

A Biden campaign spokesman welcomed Trump’s guilty verdicts as evidence that “no one is above the law”.

“Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his personal gain,” Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director, said. “But today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks to reporters. Picture: Getty Images via AFP.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer who was a key prosecution witness, said: “Today is an important day for accountability and the rule of law. While it has been a difficult journey for me and my family, the truth always matters.”

Opinion polls have suggested that a criminal conviction could put off some voters, but many political strategists, astonished by Trump’s ability to turn court appearances in to campaign events, doubt whether it will have an effect in November.

The counts carry a possible penalty of up to four years in prison though in view of Trump’s age and his lack of previous convictions, and given that he is considered a non-violent offender, he is likely to be spared incarceration by Judge Juan Merchan.

Any sentence is expected to be pending an appeal, which could take a year. If Trump becomes president, in that time, he could not pardon himself as the verdict was reached in a state, rather than in a federal court but the office would shield him from any prison sentence. A justice department memorandum holds that a president should not be incarcerated as he or she may struggle to fulfil all of their duties, let alone serve as leader of the free world, from a prison cell.

Trump is now expected to be interviewed by probation officers who will compose a pre-sentencing report for the judge on his mental health and personal history and his circumstances at the time he committed the offences. At the time, according to prosecutors, he was in the Oval Office of the White House.

His conviction comes after a trial that ran for two and a half months in Lower Manhattan, drawing a host of larger-than-life characters to the park outside the courthouse, and to the witness stand. David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, described a secret agreement in 2015 to aid Trump’s campaign for the presidency, in which his company would buy up negative stories about the candidate, particularly involving women, to stop them from being published.

Anti-Trump protesters celebrate after his conviction. Picture: AFP.

Pecker said the publishing company he led, AMI, paid $150,000 in 2016 for the story of a former Playboy model named Karen McDougal, who claimed to have had an affair with Trump, to “take it off the market”. Trump did not reimburse him and when he learned that an adult film star named Stormy Daniels was also preparing to speak publicly about an affair, he declined to buy it and instead tipped of Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, to allow him to come to an arrangement with her, Pecker said.

The story Cohen paid $130,000 to keep quiet was told, in vivid detail, by Daniels, 45, on the witness stand. She had met Trump in 2006 during a celebrity golf tournament, where her adult film company was sponsoring a hole. “Yes, I know that’s very funny,” she said. She said Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, asked if she fancied having dinner with his boss at his hotel and she went, on the advice of her publicist, who asked: “What could possibly go wrong?”

Daniels said that after chatting with Trump, and excusing herself to visit the lavatory in the bedroom, she emerged to find him in a shirt and boxer shorts, sprawled on the bed, where she eventually found herself too. Under cross-examination, she stressed that she was not forced. “I blame myself,” she said.

She also knocked back suggestions that, as a porn star, she frequently made up stories about sex for money. “The sex in the films, it’s very much real,” she replied. “Just like what happened to me in that room.”

The chosen jury, seven men and five women, included two lawyers, several tech workers, a young teacher from Harlem and an investment banker. Judge Merchan went so far as to assure jurors, before they began their deliberations, that a guilty verdict did not necessarily entail prison time for the former president.

The Times