Former president Donald Trump was convicted in a Manhattan courtroom on May 30 on 34 out of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a plot to illegally influence the 2016 election through a “hush money” payment for an affair with an adult film star, according to reporting from the New York Times and multiple news outlets.
With this verdict, Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes, but he remains eligible to run for president in the 2024 election. Trump strongly claimed his innocence after the verdict was read and has denied the allegations and disputed the facts presented throughout the trial.
Trump faced allegations that he paid adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about their affair leading up to the 2016 presidential election. The charges he was convicted on carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. However, many experts believe that it is unlikely that Trump will serve any jail time.
Trump’s high-profile case in Manhattan has been incendiary since the beginning. Many famous public figures testified, including Trump’s former friend, ex-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, and Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen. Opening statements for the trial began on April 22; During jury selection, many people dropped out of the role when the public started investigating their family life and background, according to an April 18 report from Forbes.
Throughout the trial, Trump made several critical comments on social media and in public statements about jurors and the judge. Both these comments and Trump’s history with crossing lines led the judge to issue a gag order on him, and after numerous violations of the gag order, the judge held him in contempt and fined him $9,000, AP News reported on April 30.
The hush money trial was just the first of multiple criminal cases against Trump. Other cases vary, from charges in Florida of obstruction of justice and unlawfully holding onto classified documents, to charges in Georgia of conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, to federal charges over efforts to interrupt President Biden’s inauguration in 2021.
The criminal allegations against Trump have not dramatically affected his popularity as a political candidate; Biden and Trump remain very close in a tight national race, with Biden at 50 percent support and Trump at 48 percent, according to an NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist National Poll released May 30 prior to the verdict’s announcement.
Photo credits: “Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under (CC BY-SA 2.0)
