Donald Trump convicted on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in historic Manhattan hush money case
Donald Trump became the first former US president to be convicted of felony criminal charges Thursday.
The real estate mogul, former commander-in-chief and presumptive Republican 2024 presidential nominee was found guilty on all counts Thursday by a jury of 12 Manhattanites in the unprecedented criminal prosecution of an ex-president.
The bombshell verdict was read in Manhattan Supreme Court just after 5 p.m. following nearly 12 hours of deliberations spread over two days — and a seven-week trial that saw X-rated testimony from porn star Stormy Daniels and Trump’s former “fixer” Michael Cohen take the stand against him.
“Guilty,” the jury foreman said calmly on the first count — before repeating the word 33 more times.
Trump, 77, in a bright blue tie, slouched in his seat, shoulders forward, tilting his head and looking at each of the jurors, seven men and five women, as they confirmed his fate.
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“The real verdict will be Nov. 5 by the people,” he told reporters glumly outside the courtroom. “I’m an innocent man.”
He repeated his charge that the trial was “rigged” against him and a politically-motivated witch hunt by Democrats.
What happens next after Trump is found guilty in hush money case
- Donald Trump, who was found guilty on all 34 counts, will remain free until his scheduled sentencing on the morning of July 11.
- The former president does not face any travel restrictions until the sentencing.
- Trump’s attorneys said they plan to appeal the verdict “as soon as we can.”
- If Trump loses an appeal with the mid-level appeals court, he’ll likely seek to have the state’s highest court hear his case, which could take an additional year.
Here you can read more about what happens next following the historic guilty verdict and what Trump potentially faces.
“I’m fighting for our country, I’m fighting for our constitution,” Trump said. “We’re a nation in decline.”
Pols from both sides of the aisle were fired up about the verdict, with Dems including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse cheering it.
“The rule of law applies to everyone,” Ocasio-Cortez gloated at a town hall in the Bronx. “Donald Trump was convicted by a jury of his peers.”
Republicans, such as House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, of New York, blasted the decision as showing “how corrupt and rigged the American justice system has become.”
Trump was accused by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office of illegally trying to cover up a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels — part of a scheme to stifle sex scandals that threatened to derail his 2016 campaign.
Jurors found that Trump falsified business records throughout 2017 by lying that he was paying his then-lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen for phony “legal services” when he was actually reimbursing him for the hush money that kept Daniels from speaking out about having sex with Trump inside a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 2006.
Prosecutors showed 11 invoices, 12 digital ledger entries and 11 checks to Cohen, most of which were signed by Trump, that they said were evidence that the Trump Organization tried to disguise the repayments to Cohen as phony legal services.
Trump’s lawyers seized on Cohen’s history of lies — and revealed that he’d once stolen $60,000 from the ex-president’s business — as they tried to paint him as a serial fabulist hellbent on seeing his former boss behind bars.
Cohen — a convicted perjurer who testified that he lied under oath in the past to “protect” Trump — was the prosecution’s star witness.
Other evidence suggested that Cohen, 57, was telling the truth when he claimed that Trump — who bragged in book excerpts shown to jurors about micromanaging every detail of his business — directed him to buy Daniels’ silence.
“He said, ‘Absolutely. Do it. Take care of it.’’’ Cohen told the jury.
Follow The Post’s live blog for the latest updates on Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial
Jurors heard Cohen on tape discussing Trump’s knowledge of the Daniels payoff with the porn star’s lawyer.
In another recording played at trial, Trump appeared aware of a plan to pay $150,000 to work with the National Enquirer to kill a story from another alleged mistress, Playboy model Karen McDougal, before the election.
“What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Trump told Cohen on the recording.
In all over the six weeks of testimony, jurors heard from 22 witnesses total, with 20 called by the prosecution and two called by Trump’s side.
The panelists — who were kept anonymous throughout trial for their safety — asked for the long jury instructions to be read back to them and to again hear portions of the testimony, including that of former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker.
Pecker testified about two catch-and-kill payments he paid — at Trump’s behest — to the Playboy Playmate McDougal and a Trump Tower doorman to keep them from going public about other affair allegations.
Trump’s main witness was Robert Costello, a former federal prosecutor with ties to Trump’s legal team, who claimed that Cohen told him that Trump didn’t know about the Daniels payoff.
Each of the 34 felony counts Trump was convicted of carry a possible sentence ranging from probation to up to four years in prison.
Trump is set to be sentenced on the morning of July 11.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said Trump can remain free without bail until that date.
On his way out of the 100 Centre Street courtroom, a red-faced Trump gave a vigorous handshake to his son Eric.
The jurors were asked to stay behind by Merchan, so he could thank them for serving and to get their feedback, before they were ushered away from the courthouse in four vans.
Bragg at a press conference declined to say whether he’d be seeking jail time at Trump’s sentencing.
“I did my job. Our job is to follow the facts and the law without fear or favor and that’s exactly what we did here,” the DA said. “There are many voices out there. The only voice that matters is the voice of the jury and the jury has spoken.”
Trump denied the charges and, in daily press conferences from the courthouse hallway, blasted the case as what he called a politically motivated plot to remove him from the campaign trail.
Still, Trump was limited on what he could publicly say after Merchan before trial issued a gag order, barring him from speaking about jurors, witnesses, and court staff, including relatives of the judge himself and Bragg.
He declined to take the stand to testify in his own defense, but jurors are not allowed to take that decision into account during deliberations.
Trump repeatedly decried the gag — which an appeals court upheld — as unfair. Merchan slapped Trump with $10,000 of fines for ten violations of the order.
The case marked the first time in US history that a former president stood trial on criminal charges.
Trump still faces three other criminal cases including in Georgia state court for allegedly attempting to interfere in the 2020 election result, in Washington DC federal court for his alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot and in Florida federal court for allegedly mishandling classified documents.
New York Law School professor Anna Cominsky said while Trump was convicted, there is certainly a long road ahead with his inevitable appeal.
“The jury has spoken,” Cominsky said. “Trump, like every criminal defendant, enjoyed the presumption of innocence until today.”
While “the case is not over” with the upcoming sentencing and likely appeal, for now, “he is the first president to be found guilty of felonies in our country’s history,” Cominsky said.
Protesters, both for and against Trump, flocked to the lower Manhattan courthouse during deliberations, with a few skirmishes breaking out between them and NYPD officers at one point stepping in to separate the mob.
At the end of the day, anti-Trump protester Nadine Seiler held a “Trump’s Convicted” banner and chanted “Don’s a felon!”
“He is not a Teflon Don anymore. He’s a convicted Don,” said the 59-year-old Maryland resident.
Additional reporting by Jack Morphet, Steven Vago, Ryan King and Steven Nelson
