NEW YORK – A day after a New York jury returned a historic guilty verdict in Donald Trump’s felon trial, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is likely looking to cast his conviction and crusade in a new light.
The former president is expected to attend a news conference at Trump Tower on Friday morning.
After his sentencing on Thursday, Trump angrily denounced the trial as an “embarrassment,” telling reporters he was an “innocent man. “
His supporters were quick to echo those sentiments, while many of his critics — political and otherwise — applauded the verdict.
Trump convicted on 34 counts in connection with a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by secretly paying cash to a porn actor who claimed the two had sex. The secret trial and upcoming conviction mark the first time a former U. S. president has been tried or convicted. in a criminal case.
He still faces three other felony charges, but the New York case is the first to go to trial and likely the only one before the November election.
Judge Juan M. Merchan has scheduled Trump’s sentencing for July 11. The fees carry a sentence of up to 4 years in prison, the punishment in the end falls on Merchan. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to say whether prosecutors would seek prison time.
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After rising more than 2% at the market open, the stock fell 7%, roughly the levels at which they were trading without delay after the after-hours condemnation announced late Thursday.
Donald Trump’s hush money case, criticized by some legal experts as the weakest of the four prosecutions against him, takes on greater significance not only because it was the first to be tried, but also because it would possibly be the only one to win a jury before the election.
The other three — local and federal authorities in Atlanta and Washington accusing him of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, as well as a federal indictment in Florida accusing him of illegally hoarding top-secret documents — are stuck in delays or appeals.
Donald Trump supporters and right-wing pundits waved and shared inverted flag symbols to protest the former president’s conviction. At least one saw Trump Tower in Manhattan outdoors Friday morning and elected officials, adding Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. He shared the symbol online on Thursday.
The symbol, once a sign of misery for sailors, has the “Stop the Steal” movement, which falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen. The symbol was also seen outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in Virginia, even though Alito said it was a dispute between his wife and his neighbors.
Other incendiary rhetoric on social media called the verdict a declaration of “war” or a sign of a “civil war” approaching. The words “RIP America” trended on X, formerly known as Twitter, after the verdict.
Donald Trump’s crusade said it raised a record $34. 8 million in small online contributions from his secret cash conviction, nearly double its previous highest.
“Just minutes after the sham trial verdict was announced, our virtual fundraising formula was defeated with support, and despite transitory online delays due to heavy traffic, President Trump raised $34. 8 million from small donors,” Trump campaign’s senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said in a statement.
Fundraising emails used harsh language, “I’m a political prisoner” and “JUSTICE IS DEAD IN AMERICA!”
Campaign advisers said about 30 percent of Thursday’s donors were new to the fundraising platform.
Dozens of reporters and television crews piled up in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan ahead of the former president’s post-sentencing remarks scheduled for 11 a. m.
It’s the same 1980s brass and pink marble entrance where Donald Trump descended his gilded escalator to announce his 2016 crusade years ago next month.
Five American flags have set up a small lectern where he will speak.
The conviction of Donald Trump in his secret trial in New York is a stunning development in an already unorthodox presidential election with profound implications for the judicial formula and for American democracy itself.
But in a deeply divided United States, it’s unclear whether Trump’s standing as a convicted felony user will have an effect on the 2024 election.
Trump remains in a competitive position against President Joe Biden this fall, even though the former Republican president now faces a prison sentence in the run-up to the November election.
At least in the short term, there were immediate symptoms that the unanimous guilty verdict was helping to unify the GOP’s disparate factions, as GOP officials in Congress and in state capitals across the country mobilized their presumptive presidential nominee, as their crusade hoped to take advantage of a flood of new fundraising dollars.
Several Republican lawmakers reacted furiously Thursday to Donald Trump’s felony conviction and rushed to defend him, questioning the legitimacy of the trial and the way it was conducted.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said it was a “shameful day in American history” and called the allegations “purely political. “
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has been one of Trump’s most common allies, said, “This verdict says more about the formula than the allegations. “
And while Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell refrained from attacking the jury’s ruling, he said the fees “should never have been filed in the first place. “
Many Republican lawmakers, Johnson added, have gone to court in New York to denounce Trump in his trial as a criminal.
Donald Trump would have possibly been convicted of a felony and lives in Florida, a state known for restricting the right to vote for felons, but he can still vote while he remains out of prison in New York state.
This is because Florida is subject to other states’ disenfranchisement regulations for citizens convicted of crimes committed out of state. In Trump’s case, New York law only takes away their right to vote when they are incarcerated. Once released from prison, their rights are restored. Even if they’re on probation, under a 2021 law passed by the state’s Democratic legislature.
“If a Floridian’s voting rights are restored to the state of conviction, they are restored under Florida law,” Blair Bowie of the Campaign Legal Center wrote in an article explaining the state of the law, noting that other people without Trump’s legal remedies are confused. . Florida’s complex rules.
Donald Trump’s conviction Thursday on 34 counts marked the end of the former president’s historic silent trial.
Now comes sentencing and the prospect of a criminal sentence. A lengthy appeals procedure may follow, especially since Trump’s legal team has already set the bar for an appeal.
And in the meantime, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee still faces three more cases of crime and a crusade that may lead him to return to the White House.