A Sense of Doubt blog post #3395 - Donald Trump: First President EVER to be convicted of a felony
I was out of the country and unplugged from the American news cycle.
Here's a collection of the news items and commentary from the first few days as we await sentencing.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-is-convicted-felon-now-what-2024-05-30/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/31/hush-money-next-for-trump
Former US President Donald Trump has been convicted of falsifying records to cover a hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels leading up to the 2016 United States presidential election.
This decision makes Trump the first president in the history of the United States to be convicted of criminal charges.
What was Trump found guilty of?
After seven weeks of trial, shortly after 5pm local time (21:00 GMT) on Thursday, a New York City jury unanimously found him guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.
Daniels claimed that ahead of the 2016 election that Trump eventually won, he paid her $130,000 to remain silent on a sexual encounter the two had a decade earlier. Trump denies the affair.
Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen made the payment, and testified that he acted under Trump’s direct orders. Cohen insists Trump paid him back, using money collected for his election campaign.
The 34 charges relate to the different ways in which Trump categorised this hush money as legal fees in his records, which, according to the court included:
- Eleven invoices for legal services
- Eleven cheques paid for legal services
- Twelve ledger entries for legal expenses
Will Trump go to prison?
It is unlikely that Trump will go to jail, although it is technically possible.
While paying hush money in itself is not illegal, each count of falsification carries a sentence ranging from one year to a maximum of four years. So, in theory, Trump could face up to a total of 136 years in prison.
But in practice, it is uncommon for people who are only convicted of falsification of business records and have no other criminal history to be sentenced to prison in New York. Instead, punishments such as probation, fines or community service are more common.
Even those who are sentenced to jail over falsification convictions typically serve a year or less in prison, and that too, usually, if they are also convicted of other crimes such as fraud or grand larceny – which is not the case with Trump.
When will sentencing take place?
At the end of Thursday’s proceedings, sentencing was set for 10am (14:00 GMT) on July 11, at the request of defence lawyer Todd Blanche.
Trump will return to court for his sentencing hearing.
It falls four days before Trump is expected to be formally nominated as the party’s presidential nominee at the Republican Party’s national convention.
Can Trump still run for president as a felon?
Yes, Trump can still run for US president in the November 2024 election.
The US Constitution requires that presidents are at least 35 years old and natural-born US citizens who have lived in the country for at least 14 years – Trump fulfils all criteria.
It does not bar convicts from running for or winning the presidency.
Can Trump appeal the conviction?
After Trump’s conviction, his lawyer, Blanche, asked Judge Juan Merchan to dismiss the guilty verdict. But Merchan swiftly rejected the routine, pro forma request.
However, after sentencing, Trump can challenge his conviction in a New York appellate court and possibly the Court of Appeals. His lawyers are already believed to be laying the groundwork for potential arguments, including:
- He can accuse the judge of bias, arguing that the judge’s daughter leads a firm with several Democrats as clients, including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
- He can argue Judge Merchan made legal errors, including in allowing jurors to hear Daniels’ salacious testimony.
- Blanche argued Daniels’ description of a power imbalance with the older, taller Trump, was a “dog whistle for rape,” irrelevant to the case.
- Trump can argue that the charges themselves were legally improper. Falsification alone is a misdemeanour in New York but is elevated to a felony when done to help commit or conceal another crime. In this case, the other crime, according to the prosecution, was a conspiracy to violate a state election law. However, Trump’s lawyers can argue that since he was contesting a federal election, state election laws don’t apply to him, and so he should have been charged with a misdemeanour, not a felony.
Donald’s Dumbest Lie?
Denying sex with Stormy Daniels may prove to be Trump’s costliest claim.
Donald Trump has told many dumb lies. He has demanded that his subordinates tell many dumb lies. Some of Trump’s lies could cost him dearly. But his lawyers’ recent denials that Trump had sex with Stormy Daniels may turn out to be the most costly.
It’s impossible to know how Trump’s New York criminal trial over his hush money payment to Daniels would have ended if his attorneys hadn’t insisted that the affair never happened. Trump has long maintained that the porn star’s account of the alleged sexual encounter—along with former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story of an affair with Trump—were untrue. But he’d never before attempted to convince a jury.
Here is one way to think about it: The Manhattan DA’s office had to prove that Trump committed 34 felonies by falsifying business records as part of a scheme intended to violate a state election interference law. That state election law prohibits the use of “unlawful means”—that is, the violation of even more laws—to influence an election. That’s all pretty complicated.
At the outset of the trial, few people understood the case against Trump, let alone assumed he was guilty. But almost everyone, probably including the jurors, assumed he slept with Daniels and McDougal. Simple.
And yet, Trump’s lawyers, in their opening and closing statements, asked jurors to believe that Trump did not have sex with those women. It was a key part of their effort to show that prosecutors had failed to prove the complicated case.
But Trump’s lawyers didn’t have to do that. Extramarital sex isn’t a crime. They could have simply argued that regardless of the details of those relationships, or what jurors might think of the former president, hush money payments aren’t themselves illegal. They could have argued that the prosecutors had failed to make the multi-part crime they alleged clear enough to warrant a conviction.
Those are decent arguments, but Trump’s lawyers complicated it—possibly at their client’s behest—with a dubious and legally unnecessary denial.
Jurors, experts say, often decide cases based on whose story they believe. And judge Juan Merchan told Trump’s team: “Your denial puts the jury in the position of choosing who they believe.” The jurors ultimately sided with the prosecutors and with Daniels, who for years has offered a consistent and specific account of a sexual encounter with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada.
To be sure, Trump mounted that ill-advised legal defense in part because he is running for president. Denying he had extramarital sex while his wife was pregnant makes more sense as a political argument.
But his team’s insistence on disputing Daniels’ story probably hurt him outside the trial too. That’s because the denial opened the door for Daniels to testify in detail about her alleged hookup with Trump.
“The more specificity Ms. Daniels can provide about the encounter, the more the jury can weigh about whether the encounter did occur and if so, whether they choose to credit Ms. Daniels’ story,” Merchan said
Daniels was left free to share under oath her account, first reported by Mother Jones, of spanking Trump with a magazine.
Worse, Daniels suggested the encounter was not fully consensual. That testimony is a reminder that a separate jury last year found Trump liable for sexual assault against E. Jean Carroll, and the judge in that case has repeatedly said that the jury’s verdict amounted to a finding that Trump had committed “rape,” as that term is commonly understood. And it is a reminder of the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump said his celebrity allowed him to grab women “by the pussy” and get away with it.
Trump was convicted Thursday of breaking New York law as part of a scheme to cover up infidelity allegations he feared would worsen the damage from the Access Hollywood tape on the eve of the 2016 election. Now, five months before the 2024 election, these probable lies have left him facing a potential prison sentence—and have put all those damaging stories back in the news.
After Donald Trump’s criminal conviction, could he go to prison? What if he appeals? Can he still vote?
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MORE COVERAGE
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 May 31, 2024 |
Good morning. We’re covering Trump’s conviction — as well as Justice Alito, the Scripps spelling bee winner and Banksy
Guilty
The criminal justice system finally caught up to Donald Trump.
He has spent decades on the edge of legal trouble. First, he was a New York businessman whose company violated discrimination laws, failed to repay debts and flirted with bankruptcy. Then, he was a president who impeded an investigation of his 2016 campaign, tried to overturn the result of his re-election defeat and refused to return classified documents he took from the White House.
Throughout, his central strategy was the same: delay. Try to push off legal problems for as long as possible and hope that a solution somehow presented itself. It usually worked, too. And it seemed to be on the verge of working again this year, with two federal trials and one state trial in Georgia all unlikely to finish before Election Day.
Yesterday, however, a criminal jury judged Trump for the first time. The verdict was guilty, 34 times, pronounced late in the afternoon in downtown Manhattan. The prosecutors argued that Trump had falsified business records to hide a sexual affair from voters and corrupt the 2016 election. After two days of deliberation, the 12 jurors agreed. Trump has become the first former president of the United States to be a convicted felon.
Yes, the caveats are important. He will appeal, and some legal experts think he has a case, given the novel combination of accusations that the prosecutors made. It is unclear when, or even if, he will go to prison. Most important, nobody knows whether it will help or hurt his presidential campaign.
On the most basic level, however, Trump experienced a personal defeat yesterday unlike any other.
My colleague Michael Gold, who has been covering Trump, said that as he left the courthouse — after making a combative statement but taking no questions — Trump “looked more somber than I have seen him at any point in the last several months.”
Maggie Haberman, who has been covering Trump for years, notes that Trump and his aides frequently respond to bad news with spin about what actually happened. “By following this playbook, Trump’s team can usually create enough confusion to leave people questioning outcomes,” Maggie wrote. “Not so with a jury verdict.”
In the rest of today’s newsletter, we’ll walk you through three key questions, round up the rest of The Times’s coverage and give you a selection of outside commentary.
Three questions
1. Could Trump go to prison?
Yes, but it’s not clear if he will. The judge, Juan Merchan, scheduled sentencing for July 11. Until then, Trump remains free.
Each of the 34 counts on which Trump was convicted carries a sentence of up to four years. Most legal observers believe that a sentence of more than four years — in which Trump would serve consecutive terms, rather than concurrent terms — is unlikely. Merchan could also decide to sentence Trump to probation and no prison time. Before sentencing, Trump will sit with a psychologist or a social worker and have a chance to explain why he deserves a light punishment.
Even if Merchan sentences Trump to prison time, it may not begin immediately. Merchan could instead allow Trump to remain free while courts heard his appeal. The appeals could take months or years, well beyond Election Day, and could rise to the Supreme Court.
2. Can Trump still be president?
Yes. The Constitution does not bar him from holding office because of this felony. He could run for president from prison. If he was elected from prison, he could not pardon himself because the conviction is on state charges rather than federal charges. But he could sue for his release, arguing that his imprisonment prevented him from fulfilling his constitutional duties as president.
Read more about what could happen next.
3. How will his conviction affect the campaign?
Nobody knows. Political prognostication after unprecedented news is a recipe for regret. (The day after Richard Nixon resigned, a front-page story in this very newspaper said the resignation immediately made Gerald Ford the favorite to win the 1976 election; he lost.)
But we understand that readers are hungry for analysis of this question because it may be the most important one. And we recommend this article by Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.
Nate points out that Trump’s current polling lead relies on voters who have traditionally supported Democrats, including younger and nonwhite voters. Some of them have previously told pollsters that a conviction would make them less comfortable with supporting Trump. Nate also emphasizes — and this will sound familiar — that nobody yet knows what will happen.
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| In Manhattan. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times |
How Trump responded
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More coverage
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Commentary
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Trump's Conviction Suggests Jurors Bought the Prosecution's Dubious 'Election Fraud' Narrative There was a glaring mismatch between the charges against the former president and what prosecutors described as the essence of his crime. By Jacob Sullum
The Prosecution's Story About Trump Featured Several Logically Impossible Claims Whatever Donald Trump did after the 2016 presidential election, it seems safe to say that it did not retroactively promote his victory. By Jacob Sullum |
https://www.wonkette.com/p/donald-trump-free-at-last-free-at
Donald Trump Free At Last, Free At Last, And Other Deep Thoughts About The Convicted Felon
Oh! Jail for Donald! Jail for Donald for ONE THOUSAND YEARS!
Oh, sure, we’ve already had a post about stupid takes on the conviction of convicted felon Donald “Convicted Felon” Trump, but the stupid hits just keep coming, so here, have moar stupid!
Over at Fox News, the tone was defiant, without even the slightest hint that the headline writers were grasping for a silver lining: Hooray, he’s finally free to campaign, as he would have been if he hadn’t committed multiple rafts of felonies.
Oh, and that “warning shot to Biden”? It was, fortunately, not fired from a gun on Fifth Avenue, but was an actually not-violent comment for Fox Digital from campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who said,
"Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrats confined President Trump to a courtroom for more than eight hours a day for more than six weeks, and he’s still winning. Now that he is fully back on the campaign trial, Biden and the Democrats better buckle up."
Also too, if you thought “freed to hit campaign trail” was dumb, check out the URL for that story, which hints that the draft headline for the story was something like “Trump released from freezing NYC courtroom to warm embrace of his rallies,” and we can see why that was too cringe even for jaded Fox News editors.
That wasn’t the only epic headline on Fox News Dot Com today, because just below the big banner story about the liberation of convicted felon Donald Trump, there’s this trio of stories that are of equal news value to America:
Who fared best — and worst — in the aftermath of Trump's guilty verdict
MARK LEVIN: The Democrat Party has completely destroyed our electoral system
'Aliens' that landed in family's backyard used 'cloaking device' to hide from humans: expert
For the aliens in the backyard story, which is about aliens from space, not Venezuela, the headline is accompanied by a big red chyron reading “'UNDENIABLE EVIDENCE’” and an animated gif of three separate video frames, with the heads of “aliens” highlighted in a green outline. What other color would you use, duhhh. [Fox News / Fox News]
Elsewhere, there was this epic entry for the never-ending New Frontiers In Bothsidesing contest, courtesy of Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf, the thinking person’s David Brooks:
“I didn't follow the trial. I don't know if the verdict was right or wrong. Regardless, a lot of Trump haters and Trump supporters alike could gain insight into one another's mindsets right now by remembering how you felt back in 2016 when Trump led chants of ‘lock her up.’"
Friedersdorf explained that this only looks like bothsidesing, and he is not suggesting any equivalence between Trump’s actual conviction and the ill-informed chants aimed at Clinton. Rather, he just wishes we’d stop and think about our fellow Americans, because folks in either political camp might benefit from “understanding how different factions feel,” which would be a good thing in itself, would it not?
He added that he didn’t at all mean to suggest that Clinton deserved to be locked up, or that Trump does not, but rather that we should consider
what others *do* feel, with their various, sometimes inaccurate understanding of the facts, not what they *should* feel given the actual facts.
Well, yes, that’s nice and all, but … well, let’s be honest here, that kind of close examination of how the other half feels doesn’t exactly seem forthcoming equally from bothsides, does it? One wag replied,
“I think we'll likely see a lot of Trump supporters reflecting on those chants now. As a whole, his base is very self-aware and empathetic.”
Friedersdorf replied that would indeed be nice, even if it were uncommon:
“Reminding them of that moment, as I did in that tweet, may cause some small percentage to give it some thought. And that's about the best one can do on most subjects.”
And then everyone felt much more thoughtful about the Times In Which We Find Ourselves. In related news, a California judge is today considering an application for an anti-stalking protection order from Mr. Friedersdorf’s navel, who complains he won’t quit gazing at it.
In another novel thought experiment, Alan Dershowitz went on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, which we believe runs 26 hours a day, via witchcraft, to explain that, sadly for Trump enthusiasts, the Great Man’s felony convictions are unlikely to be overturned. But that’s not because the case was so well-proved, or because an appeal would fall short of showing the prosecution was unfair, or any of those troublesome law-knowin’ things.
Nope, Dersh said with an apparently straight face that no judge would be willing to overturn Trump’s conviction because then they’d be shunned by all their peers, just as Dershowitz became a pariah in the Martha’s Vineyard social scene when he stood up for Trump on Fox News, and also when Trump was on trial in the Senate (same thing) during his first impeachment.
“He has to appeal first through the New York system and the New York system are all judges that don’t wanna be responsible for freeing Donald Trump. These are people with their families. These are people who don’t wanna be Dershowitzed.”
You were aware that’s a verb, right? It’s absolutely a thing that human beings other than Alan Dershowitz say, all the time!
“People know what happened to me when I defended Donald Trump on the floor of the Senate. Nobody on Martha’s Vineyard would speak to me, Harvard Law School canceled me after I’d been there for 50 years, and judges don’t want that to happen to them. So I am not encouraged that he’ll get a fair appeal.”
That is exactly how the law works in America today, yes, especially if you are neighbors of the Alitos. [Mediaite]
And finally, Politico reports that Donald Trump’s campaign is attending to the most important aspect of this unprecedented historical moment: Making sure it benefits financially from the anger of Trump supporters without a bunch of other greedy Republican campaigns trying to make a buck off Trump’s suffering, which is his alone, you understand?
“Any Republican elected official, candidate or party committee siphoning money from President Trump’s donors are no better than Judge Merchan’s daughter,” said Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita. “We’re keeping a list, we’ll be checking it twice and we aren’t in the spirit of Christmas.”
In particular, Trumpworld wants to stomp out dishonest grifters like loyal Trump Republican congressional candidate Dave Williams of Colorado, who sent out a fundraising message condemning the convictions and urging donors to “STAND WITH TRUMP & DAVE.” Problem is, the appeal linked only to “a landing page in which donations are solely sent to Williams.”
Why, that’s the sort of trick Trump would be delighted by, if only it were his campaign pulling it. No wonder his people are pissed off. They know exactly what lowlife scammers their respected colleagues are, and want to make sure nobody steals a piece of Trump’s own grift. [Politico]
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2406.04 - 10:10
- Days ago = 3259 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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