Justice is served: Donald Trump convicted on all thirty-four counts of falsifying business records

Don­ald Trump is now a con­vict­ed felon.

The long­time New York res­i­dent, who cur­rent­ly lives in Flori­da, today became the first ex‑U.S. Pres­i­dent to be con­vict­ed of a crime when a jury of New York­ers found him guilty on thir­ty-four counts of fal­si­fy­ing busi­ness records. Trump’s sen­tenc­ing has been sched­uled for July 11th by Judge Juan Mer­chan, who will decide what his pun­ish­ment will be. 

The charges car­ry a max­i­mum sen­tence of twen­ty years in prison. How­ev­er, the law does not oblig­ate Judge Mer­chan to incar­cer­ate Trump. He has a big deci­sion to make. 

A sub­dued Trump walked out of the cour­t­house after the ver­dict was read to react and pro­ceed­ed to whine about how “rigged” the tri­al was, though he could not muster his usu­al brava­do. Com­menters wry­ly observed it was a “low ener­gy” gripefest. 

Repub­li­cans imme­di­ate­ly began howl­ing in protest, tak­ing their cues from Trump, while Democ­rats char­ac­ter­ized the ver­dict as a long over­due reckoning. 

No one is above the law is the theme of almost every state­ment we’ve received. 

“In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law,” said Biden-Har­ris 2024 Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor Michael Tyler. “Don­ald Trump has always mis­tak­en­ly believed he would nev­er face con­se­quences for break­ing the law for his own per­son­al gain. 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. Con­vict­ed felon or not, Trump will be the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for president.” 

“The threat Trump pos­es to our democ­ra­cy has nev­er been greater. He is run­ning an increas­ing­ly unhinged cam­paign of revenge and ret­ri­bu­tion, pledg­ing to be a dic­ta­tor ‘on day one’ and call­ing for our Con­sti­tu­tion to be ‘ter­mi­nat­ed’ so he can regain and keep pow­er. A sec­ond Trump term means chaos, rip­ping away Amer­i­cans’ free­doms and foment­ing polit­i­cal vio­lence – and the Amer­i­can peo­ple will reject it this November.”

“Whether cit­i­zen, can­di­date, or pres­i­dent, no one is above the law,” agreed NextGen PAC Pres­i­dent Cristi­na Tzintzún Ramirez. “When elect­ed offi­cials break the law, they must be held account­able. From pay­ing off peo­ple to keep vot­ers from learn­ing of his scan­dals, to incit­ing a dead­ly insur­rec­tion on Jan­u­ary 6th, to threat­en­ing our nation­al secu­ri­ty by ille­gal­ly retain­ing clas­si­fied doc­u­ments and obstruct­ing jus­tice, Don­ald Trump has repeat­ed­ly jeop­ar­dized Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy by stok­ing chaos and dis­or­der, and today’s results only under­score that truth.” 

“Today’s deci­sion was made by a jury of every­day Amer­i­cans, who weighed the evi­dence and found the for­mer President’s actions to be a crime. And, with more tri­als to come, this is just the start of Trump’s prob­lems. Young vot­ers are pay­ing atten­tion, and we will not stand to have a cor­rupt, fas­cist, and extrem­ist leader guid­ing our coun­try into the future. Trump and MAGA Repub­li­cans must be held account­able. They will keep chip­ping away at our free­doms until they face the full con­se­quences for their crimes.”

“He had it com­ing,” said Analil­ia Mejia and DaMareo Coop­er, the co-exec­u­tive direc­tors of the Cen­ter for Pop­u­lar Democ­ra­cy. “Trump’s lat­est attempt to defraud the Amer­i­can peo­ple has been right­ful­ly dealt with. It’s about time. Despite the lies that Trump will con­tin­ue to ped­dle, this case has proven that no one is above the law.”

“Today’s ver­dict out of New York affirms what the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has been say­ing for more than eight years – Con­vict­ed Felon Don­ald Trump is whol­ly unfit to lead our nation,” said State Par­ty Chair Shasti Conrad. 

“His con­vic­tion today by a jury of his peers demon­strates the lengths Con­vict­ed Felon Trump will go to and the laws he will break to get what he wants – anoth­er four years of pow­er at the expense of hard-work­ing Amer­i­cans. The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty will nev­er stop fight­ing for a more per­fect union, which is why we will con­tin­ue to resist Don­ald Trump’s cam­paign of lies, grift, and auto­crat­ic desires with every fiber of our being every minute of every day until the elec­tion is over and we have pre­vent­ed the end of democ­ra­cy… again.”

The indict­ment which led to today’s tri­al can be read here.

The records at issue in the case were proved by the pros­e­cu­tion to have been fal­si­fied in 2017, which was after Trump moved into the White House. The thir­ty-four records were fal­si­fied over the span of almost an entire year, with the first of the charges dat­ing to Feb­ru­ary of 2017 and the last to Decem­ber of 2017. 

The Peo­ple of the State of New York v. Don­ald J. Trump is often called “a hush mon­ey case.” But it’s real­ly about the fal­si­fi­ca­tion of busi­ness records. Pay­ing hush mon­ey isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a crime, where­as fal­si­fy­ing busi­ness records is a crime. 

And Don­ald Trump did it with the intent to com­mit or con­ceal anoth­er crime.

He prob­a­bly nev­er imag­ined any­one would suc­ceed in hold­ing him account­able for his law­break­ing. But Dis­trict Attor­ney Alvin Bragg brought a strong case. His team had to work around the cred­i­bil­i­ty prob­lems of Trump’s for­mer fix­er Michael Cohen, one of their key wit­ness­es. They pre­vailed, secur­ing a guilty ver­dict on all thir­ty-four counts.

Guilty on all thir­ty-four counts.

Kudos to the jury for their ser­vice in this case and for tak­ing their respon­si­bil­i­ties seriously.

Many Trump syco­phants lashed out at Judge Mer­chan fol­low­ing the ver­dict, claim­ing he had it in for Trump. But that’s non­sense: Mer­chan has demon­strat­ed through­out the case that he is tough and fair. NBC’s Dareh Gre­go­ri­an and Adam Reiss report­ed last year that Mer­chan “is a vet­er­an jurist with a rep­u­ta­tion for being stern yet compassionate.”

They talked to attor­neys who have expe­ri­ence inter­act­ing with Merchan: 

“He’s a seri­ous jurist, smart and even tem­pered,” said Ron Kuby, a long­time defense lawyer in Man­hat­tan. “He’s not one of those judges who yells at lawyers, and is char­ac­ter­ized as a no-non­sense judge. But he’s always in con­trol of the courtroom.”

Bar­ry Kamins, a New York judge turned defense lawyer, said his 60-year-old for­mer col­league “is well-known, even in dif­fi­cult cas­es, to exhib­it excel­lent tem­pera­ment, integri­ty and a sol­id knowl­edge of the law.”

Those tes­ti­mo­ni­als are irrel­e­vant to Trump’s enablers, of course. 

They oppose any jus­tice or account­abil­i­ty for Trump’s wrong­do­ing. Instead of respect­ing the jury ver­dict, they plan to go on the attack. They’ll try to use the ver­dict to rile up their base and raise mon­ey, and some of them may encour­age vio­lence against the judge, the jury, and the pros­e­cu­tors. Judge Mer­chan’s secu­ri­ty should be strength­ened, and every juror who par­tic­i­pat­ed in this case should be pro­vid­ed with a secu­ri­ty detail. 

No one involved in bring­ing Trump to jus­tice should be left at risk of harm from the cult that wor­ships Trump and wants to help him over­turn Amer­i­can democracy.