Trump found guilty in hush money trial
CNN
Updated 9:01 PM EDT, Thu May 30, 2024
A Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty of all 34 charges of falsifying business records Thursday, an unprecedented and historic verdict that makes Trump the first former president in American history to be convicted of a felony.
Not only is Trump the first former president to be found guilty of a felony, he’s also the first major-party presidential nominee to be convicted of a crime in the midst of a campaign for the White House. And if he defeats President Joe Biden in November, he will be the first sitting president in history to be a convicted felon.
It will ultimately be up to voters in November to decide the significance of the guilty verdict delivered by 12 ordinary New Yorkers, which, on a legal basis, does not prevent him from being elected president again.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, announced charges against Trump last year and presenting the first indictment of a former president, accusing him of falsifying the repayment of his former lawyer Michael Cohen in order to cover up a $130,000 payment Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep her from speaking out about an alleged affair with Trump before the 2016 election. (Trump has denied the affair.)
At a news conference Thursday evening, Bragg acknowledged the historic nature of the case and the conviction. While Trump is a defendant “unlike any other in American history,” the district attorney said the verdict was arrived at “in the same manner as every other case that comes through the courtroom doors” – “by following the facts and the law and doing so without fear or favor.”
“The 12 everyday jurors vowed to make a decision based on the evidence and the law, and the evidence and the law alone. Their deliberations led them to a unanimous conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant Donald J. Trump is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, to conceal a scheme to corrupt the 2016 election,” he said.