Trump trial: After guilty verdict, former president makes statement at Trump Tower in New York

For most of Thursday, there were few signs of life from the jury in Donald Trump’s hush money trial.

That all changed shortly after 4 p.m., when the panel of 12 New Yorkers delivered a note to the judge saying they had reached a verdict in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president.

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The jury foreperson read the verdict aloud just feet from Trump, who has spent more than six weeks in court listening to testimony from 22 witnesses. Moments earlier, Trump and his legal team were in good spirits, with defense attorney Todd Blanche laughing and Trump smiling.

Almost eight years ago, key figures in the Republican Party distanced themselves from Donald Trump after the “Access Hollywood” video revealed him making lewd and aggressive comments about women.  

Then-House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., disinvited Trump from a campaign event. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, asked him to step down as the GOP nominee. And then-Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, withdrew his endorsement.  

“I’m out. I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president. It is some of the most abhorrent and offensive comments that you can possibly imagine,” Chaffetz said in October 2016. 

Then Trump won the presidency just a month later. 

Since then — after two impeachments, a 2020 presidential defeat and multiple indictments — today’s Republican Party has learned to stand 100% behind Trump when it is faced with bad news about its former president and current presumptive presidential nominee. 

Read the full story here.

Heather Dana, an Erie County voter, said she was "relieved" and "happy" after the jury's verdict in the Trump hush money case, but she added she was not expecting the jury to deliver a verdict by Thursday.

"I was kind of surprised that they all unanimously were able to come to that verdict," Dana said. "I kind of thought there would be — it would take a long time, it would be hard to get everyone to decide.”

"It’s kind of time to answer to some of the things he has done," she said. "He is not beyond the law’s reach" and "he’s just like everyone else.”

Team Trump has long seen fundraising boosts pegged to Trump's legal woes and, according to a new press release from the campaign, Thursday was a massive day for Trump's election campaign.

The campaign announced it raised $34.8 million yesterday through the GOP fundraising platform WinRed. Anna Kelly, a Republican National Committee spokesperson, clarified in an email to NBC News that the total was raised into a joint fundraising committee that includes both Trump's campaign and the RNC. It's unclear how much money will go into each entity, and the national party can accept much bigger checks than the Trump campaign can. But this way of combining a nominee and the national party's fundraising haul is common in the campaign finance world.

While every indication from the Trump campaign and the RNC is that this was a massive haul, NBC News cannot independently confirm that, both because of lags in campaign finance reporting and the byzantine way the presidential campaigns (on both sides of the aisle) raise funds. 

In response to Trump's remarks slamming the verdict, President Joe Biden's campaign spokesperson, Michael Tyler, said in a statement that Trump "cannot be president of the United States."

“America just witnessed a confused, desperate, and defeated Donald Trump ramble about his own personal grievances and lie about the American justice system, leaving anyone watching with one obvious conclusion: This man cannot be president of the United States," he said.

"Unhinged by his 2020 election loss and spiraling from his criminal convictions, Trump is consumed by his own thirst for revenge and retribution. He thinks this election is about him. But it’s not. It’s about the American people: lowering their costs, protecting their freedoms, defending their democracy," Tyler continued. He also said Trump "is sowing chaos, attacking the rule of law, and fighting for the only thing in the world he gives a damn about: Donald Trump.”

The House Judiciary Committee’s weaponization of government subcommittee is demanding that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and prosecutor Matthew Colangelo testify before the committee on June 13, the panel said in a post on X.

The chair of the committee, Trump ally Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is overseeing an investigation into Bragg and Colangelo, but this is the first substantive move by House Republicans since Trump's conviction yesterday.

A committee aide told NBC News that this is a request, not a subpoena. Prosecutors would be all but certain to not testify in the middle of an ongoing case, which the case will be if Trump appeals it, as expected.

Less than 24 hours after being found guilty on 34 felony counts, Donald Trump stood in front of a backdrop of American flags and was ready to get weeks of frustration off his chest. 

The pugilistic former president spent 40 minutes unloading rambling comments peppered with mistruths and distortions to defend himself during a news conference at Trump Tower in Manhattan.

The event was the beginning of a new reality: Trump is now the first former president to be convicted of a crime.

“This is all done by Biden and his people,” Trump said opening the news conference, continuing without evidence to directly blame President Joe Biden for his legal woes. “This is done by Washington. No one has ever seen anything like this.”

Read the full story here.

Former White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said many Americans believe former President Trump’s conviction in his criminal hush money trial was the result of a biased judge and jury in New York.

Trump finished his remarks saying that Election Day, Nov. 5, is "the most important day in the history of our country."

He then walked off without taking questions from the media.

Trump brought up the two impeachments against him — the first in 2019 and the second not long after the Jan. 6 insurrection in 2021. He called both impeachments by the House hoaxes.

He then called the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol in the last Congress a "committee of thugs."

"They call it select committee. I call it the unselect committee of thugs," he said.  

Trump repeated his claim about the nondisclosure agreement that Michael Cohen paid porn actor Stormy Daniels for, saying the related payments were legal because they were for standard NDAs.

"It’s a big deal, the nondisclosure agreement, totally honorable, totally good, totally accepted," Trump said. "Every company has nondisclosure agreements."

"It's a disgrace," the former president continued, going on to emphasize that because the payments were made for NDAs, they should not be considered "hush money."

"So it's not hush money. It's a nondisclosure agreement. Totally legal. Totally common," Trump said.

Trump said that "the people of our country know it's a hoax. ... They get it, you know, they're really smart."

"We're going to be appealing this scam. We're going to be appealing it on many different things," he said.

The judge "wouldn't allow us to have witnesses, you wouldn't allow us to talk, you wouldn't allow us to do anything," Trump added. "The judge was a tyrant."

As Trump railed against the verdict, calling the trial "ridiculous," he claimed that he is "going to jail for 187 years."

As a first-time, nonviolent offender, it is unlikely that Trump will face a long sentence — and perhaps could not even have to go jail at all.

Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records, a class E felony that is punishable by a fine, probation or up to four years in prison per count. It’s expected that any sentence would be imposed concurrently, instead of consecutively.

Trump jumped back to one of his repeated defenses that he didn't know what the case was even about, adding that he was "very upset" with his own lawyers for not being clear about the charges being brought against him.

"Even my own lawyers, I get very upset with them because they don't say what it is," Trump said.

Trump's lawyer Todd Blanche was smiling in the crowd as Trump said this and complained that the charges didn't make sense.

Trump questioned the DA's indictment charging him with 34 counts of falsifying business records.

"I paid a lawyer, totally legal. I paid a lawyer, a legal expense," he said.

"It's not Sheetrock construction, or any other thing. It's a legal expense. Think of that. This is what the falsification of business records were. And I said, what else are you going to call it?"

Trump said he would have testified during the trial and wanted to testify, but he said: "The theory is you never testify because as soon as you testify ... they'll get you on something that you said slightly wrong, and then they sue you for perjury, but I didn't care about that. I wanted to."

Trump continued: "This is a scam. There's a rigged trial. It shouldn't have been in that venue. We shouldn't have had that judge."

"As far as the trial itself, it was very unfair. We weren't allowed to use our election expert under any circumstances," said Trump, who said that witnesses were "crucified" by Judge Merchan.

"You saw what happened to some of the witnesses that were on our side," he said. "They were literally crucified by this man who looks like an angel but he’s really a devil. He looks so nice and soft. People always say he seems like such a nice man. No, unless you saw him in action. And you saw that with a certain witness that went through hell."

House Speaker Mike Johnson said today about Trump's conviction that he believes Supreme Court justices, some of whom he knows personally, are "deeply concerned" and he urged the court to step in when the case is appealed.

In an interview on "Fox and Friends," Johnson, R-La., said the conviction was "totally unprecedented" and "dangerous to our system" because it diminishes people's faith in the criminal process and the courts.

"People have to believe that justice is fair, that there’s equal justice under law. They don’t see that right now," he said. "And I think that the justices on the court, I know many of them personally, I think they’re deeply concerned about that, as we are. So I think they’ll set this straight but it’s going to take a while."

It is unclear if he was speaking generally about justices being concerned about the administration of justice or about Trump's case specifically, or whether he had spoken to any of them about it.

Trump started his off-the-cuff remarks saying, "These are bad people. These are in many cases, I believe, sick people."

He said "millions of people are flowing in from all parts of the world, not just South America, from Africa, from Asia from the Middle East, and they're coming in from jails and prisons, and they are coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums. They're coming in from all over the world into our country."

"We have a president and a group of fascists that don't want to do anything about it because they could right now, today, he could stop it," he continued. "But he's not. They're destroying our country. Our country is in very bad shape. And they're very much against me, saying these things."

Protesters are demonstrating outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan ahead of Trump's press conference there. They're holding signs that say, for example, "lock him up" and "guilty" in all caps.

Trump and his allies immediately tried to flip the script after a New York jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records yesterday.

Most of their pushback on the airwaves and social media echoed the points they were making as the trial was ongoing: They felt that Judge Juan Merchan was conflicted, the jury was made up of liberals and the case amounted to election interference to boost Biden.

As the dust from the historic criminal verdict began to settle, Trump and his backers sought to flood the zone to insist that the system was rigged against him the whole time.

“We didn’t do a thing wrong,” Trump said outside the courthouse yesterday after the unanimous guilty verdict. “I’m a very innocent man.”

Here’s how Trump and his allies went on the offensive.

Trump is joining the millions of Americans whose voting rights depend on their criminal records after a New York jury convicted him of felony charges in a hush money case.

But experts say Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is unlikely to be disenfranchised by the felony convictions in the New York case, noting that it would come down to whether he goes to prison as part of his sentence.

Forty-eight states prohibit some or all Americans with felony convictions on their records from voting, according to the Sentencing Project, and an estimated 4.4 million Americans — about 2% of the voting-age population — could not vote in the 2022 elections because of those laws. The group estimates that more than 1 million of them live in Florida, where Trump established his official residency in 2019.

Read the full story here.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, the official campaign arms of Senate Republicans and House Republicans, respectively, said they each had their best fundraising day of the cycle yesterday.

Following the verdict, Jason Thielman, the NRSC's executive director, said in a post on X, "Outrage over the sham verdict against Trump has spurred average Americans into action! The NRSC just had its largest online daily fundraising haul of the cycle."

And Jack Pandol, communications director for the NRCC, posted on X that his committee also "shattered" a previous record for the best fundraising day of the cycle. Punchbowl first reported the NRCC news.

An email went out to Biden campaign staff yesterday asking them not to post personal opinions or their own takes about the verdict on social media, instead suggesting they amplify the official campaign and White House statements, two sources familiar told NBC News.

In a statement yesterday after the verdict, Biden-Harris 2024 Communications Director Michael Tyler said: “In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law. 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."

A group that monitors right-wing social media, Advance Democracy, says it has identified online calls to dox jurors, Judge Merchan and others.

On the far-right website 8kun, an anonymous user posted the purported personal contact information and addresses for journalists, the presiding judge and some purported jurors. Advance Democracy said it has not determined whether the posted information is accurate.

Advance Democracy said it also identified “a high volume of social media posts containing violent rhetoric targeting Justice Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The group said it has not identified, however, any posts that could be perceived as concrete plans to engage in violence."

The group also said it detected general calls to organize in reaction to the verdict, but not specific details or plans for in-person activity. Some of the calls to organize include violent rhetoric (for example, calls “to go to Washington and hang everyone”).

In the lead-up to Trump's guilty verdict, false reports that spread on right-wing media about the jury instructions led to threats against Judge Merchan.

Arizona GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake reacted to Trump’s conviction on Newsmax last night and announced that her husband was subpoenaed while the verdict was coming down. 

“As this was all coming down, a process server showed up at my door and served a subpoena on my husband. They’re, they’re lawfaring me to death,” she said.

In a lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump downplayed the evidence presented at the hush money trial, saying he was “not involved” in writing “legal expense” on the business records and expressing incredulity that such a thing would be considered a crime.

“My bookkeeper called a “Legal Expense,” on the “tiny” description line of the Ledger, a “Legal Expense,” openly paid to my lawyer, at that time a fully accredited one. I was not involved in that designation, but what else would you have called it? It was, in fact, a LEGAL EXPENSE. That is the so-called “CRIME,” Trump wrote. 

Referring to Michael Cohen's efforts to secure the non-disclosure agreement with porn actor Stormy Daniels, Trump added, “My lawyer, at the time, did virtually everything on the NDA (NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT), and I assumed that what he did was correct.”

Trump reiterated that he did “nothing wrong” and said NDAs are “standard, commonly used, and LEGAL.”

“IF THIS CAN HAPPEN TO ME, IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE!” he wrote. 

Todd Blanche, Trump’s lead attorney in the hush money case, said this morning that he's not surprised about yesterday's historic verdict, but is confident the former president's conviction will be overturned on appeal.

Appearing on NBC’s "TODAY" show, a little over 12 hours since his client was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records, Blanche said: "This was a verdict we were expecting. We’re going to appeal and we’re going to win on appeal," he said.

Blanche repeated the Trump team’s long-held belief that it was impossible to get a fair trial in Manhattan, where Trump has low approval ratings.

Asked whether he was surprised that not one juror questioned the unanimous verdicts, Blanche complained that the outcome may have been different if the defense team was able to submit certain evidence, such as the tax records of witnesses.

NBC News’ Shaq Brewster spoke with voters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who explained why they would still vote for Trump despite the New York conviction.

A Trump campaign newsletter, the Palm Beach Playbook, urged supporters to get involved in the campaign after the verdict.

The campaign also reiterated criticisms of the trial, calling it a "sham" and arguing that the verdict "is the result of the Left shredding the Constitution in their savage pursuit of raw political power."

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said in an interview on CNN last night that "as soon as we can appeal, we will."

Blanche said in multiple news interviews yesterday that he believed Trump did not get a fair trial, pointing to the trial's venue, timing and judge.

Trump said yesterday that there would be a news conference at 11 a.m. today in the Trump Tower atrium.

He will deliver remarks, the campaign said.

Trump spoke outside the courtroom following his guilty verdict, but he has yet to answer questions from reporters.

The Biden campaign reacted to the verdict yesterday by saying Trump finally got his comeuppance.

Trump "has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain," campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said in a statement. "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 campaign also sent a fundraising text and email to supporters about the verdict.