The verdict of history: Trump is guilty

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct Ken Griffin’s current support of Donald Trump. We regret the error.

A New York jury yesterday reached a verdict in the case of the People v. Donald J. Trump, and they made history. Criminal charges finally stuck to the “Teflon Don” and made him a legal loser.

Donald Trump should have been convicted by now of significant federal crimes: his orchestrating an attempted coup against democracy on Jan. 6, and his purloining of boxes of classified documents that he stored in the bowels of his Mar-a-Lago estate.

With those cases hanging in limbo, the case du jour became 34 felony counts of falsifying business records with intent to conceal the payment to a porn actress of $130,000 in hush money in the run-up to the 2016 election.

It was a young jury, a middle-class jury, an intelligent jury attentive to the evidence, most of them taking notes. It was a jury drawn from the island of Manhattan, where Trump had made his mark, where he came down on a Trump Tower escalator that famous day in June 2015, almost nine years ago, to announce his candidacy for president of the United States.

The jury deliberated for more than 11 hours; asked to read exhibits, portions of the testimony and the judge’s charge; and came together unanimously to find Trump guilty of all 34 felony charges in the indictment.

Trump, who never took the stand, had attempted to try his case in the court of public opinion. He said it was a “rigged disgraceful trial.” He cherry-picked, claiming legal experts had doubts about the case, many of them staples on liberal CNN.

Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School predicted a hung jury and called the case a “Jackson Pollock prosecution,” referring to the abstract expressionist artist who would pour and drip paint onto canvases laid on the floor. A banner headline in the New York Post proclaimed Turley’s musing that District Attorney Alvin Bragg had created a “flimsy case.”

I was not one of the “legal experts” who thought there was no crime and no case. I wrote on Monday in The Hill: “I don’t think there will be a hung jury here. The evidence against Trump is so overwhelming that my bet is on a unanimous verdict of conviction.”

Never before in our history has a former president been convicted of a felony, let alone 34 felonies. Never has a major party run a convicted felon as their candidate for president.

Trump will be sentenced July 11, and the judge may fine him or sentence him to jail. That Trump repeatedly violated a gag order, and savaged the judge, his daughter, the prosecutor, the witnesses and the jury, will hardly move the court to leniency — not to mention the various civil cases impugning Trump’s character.

The sentencing date comes four days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee that is set to nominate him for the presidency — unless the delegates have second thoughts.

Trump said of the proceeding: “The real verdict is going to be November 5 by the people” He insisted he had done nothing wrong, calling himself a “very innocent man.”

In finding Trump guilty, the jury resolved the issue of credibility involving Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen, the star witness for the prosecution, whom the Trump team called a liar and a thief. And a liar and thief he was.

Cohen was an accomplice, and under New York law, unlike federal law, no one may be convicted on the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice, and the unflappable trial judge Juan Merchan so instructed the jury. This was a case awash in corroboration. And the corroboration led the jury to believe Cohen.

Trump vowed to appeal, but he is unlikely to fare very well. It is trite law that if the evidence was sufficient to warrant submission to the jury, it is not for appellate judges to weigh evidence or to determine the credibility of witnesses.

The judgment of the jury is devastating for Trump. Until now, he was presumed to be innocent. Funders, Republican politicians and former primary opponents had endorsed him. Now he is a convicted criminal.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has called the Bible the foundation of his worldview, and who visited the Manhattan courthouse to pay homage, was quick to denounce the proceedings as a sham. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that Trump would prevail on appeal.

Early critics — such as Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who are vying for a vice-presidential spot on the Trump ticket — have endorsed him. So has “Never Trump” Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. The most shocking turnabout was former Gov. Nikki Haley, who waged a primary fight attacking Trump’s character and mental stability, only to relent at the end and announce her support. These Republican leaders have yet to be heard from.

Wealthy donors have also shown moral flexibility. Blackstone billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, who had abandoned Trump after the congressional losses of 2022, returned to the fold because of policy concerns and “the dramatic rise of antisemitism.” Another billionaire, Ken Griffin, who had called Trump a “three-time loser,” is now considering getting on board. We wonder what they will say now. Whether any of these stay the course once the weight of the verdict has sunk in remains to be seen.

It is dangerous to cross Trump if you are a Republican politician. Trump and the MAGAs have already trashed GOP Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, who called on Americans to respect the legal process and the verdict.

Will this conviction cost Trump the election? Of course there are other issues bearing on Trump’s character far more serious than the cover up of his tryst with Stormy Daniels. His history as a liar, a bigot and an autocrat hell-bent on wreaking vengeance on his political enemies is much more egregious. But in a close race in the seven battleground states, this verdict in a Manhattan courtroom should cost Trump dearly at the polls.

James D. Zirin, author and legal analyst, is a former federal prosecutor in New York’s Southern District. He is also the host of the public television talk show and podcast Conversations with Jim Zirin.