Former US president Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts as jury reaches verdict in hush money case

Former president Donald Trump has been found guilty on all 34 felony counts.

A New York jury on Thursday found former President Donald Trump guilty of all 34 felony charges of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels by his then-personal lawyer before the 2016 election.

As he walked out of the courtroom, Trump was outraged by the decision.

“This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who is corrupt. It’s a rigged trial. A disgrace.” Trump said.

“They wouldn’t give us a venue change. We were at 5% or 6% in this district, in this area.

“This was a rigged, disgraceful trial.

“The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people and they know what happened here and everybody knows what happened here.

“We didn’t do anything wrong. I’m a very innocent man and it’s OK, I’m fighting for or country, I’m fighting for or country, I’m fighting for our constitution.

“Our whole country is big rigged.

“This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent, and I think it’s just a disgrace and we’ll keep fighting.

“We’ll fight to tend and we’ll win because our country has gone to hell.

“We don’t have the same country any more. We don’t have the same country any more. We have a divided mess.

“We are a nation in decline, serious decline.

“Millions and millions of people pouring into our country right now from prisons and from mental institutions, terrorists. They are taking over our country.

“We have a country that’s in big trouble. But this was a rigged decision, right from day one with a conflicted judge who should have never been allowed to try this case. Never! And we will fight for our constitution. This is long from over. Thank you very much.”

Trump is the first former U.S. president to be found guilty of any crime.

Sentencing

His sentencing was quickly scheduled for July 11. That is four days before the beginning of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump is set to be formally confirmed as the GOP’s presidential nominee.

Trump, who remains free without bail, faces a maximum possible sentence of four years in prison for each count.

Trump’s demeanor did not change during the reading of the verdict. His son Eric Trump looked angry after the jury foreman repeatedly said “guilty” to each count as it was read.

The jury

The 12-member jury had sent out a note to the trial judge at 4:20 p.m. ET saying they had reached a verdict. The jurors asked for a half hour to complete the verdict forms.

“We the jury have a verdict. We would like an extra 30 minutes to fill out the forms if that’d be possible,” the note said, according to Judge Juan Merchan, who read it out loud in the courtroom.

Jurors deliberated less than 10 hours over two days before sending out the note. Before the announcement, Trump, his lawyers, prosecutors and reporters expected the jury to be dismissed for the day at 4:30 p.m.

Trump was sitting in the courtroom with his arms crossed and a resigned look on his face minutes after the announcement was made.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr., whose office is prosecuting Trump, entered the courtroom after the note was sent out.

Trump, 77, is charged in the case with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels by his then-personal lawyer Michael Cohen before the 2016 election.

The verdict in Manhattan Supreme Court came on the second day of deliberations after jurors heard readbacks of testimony by Cohen and former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, as well as portions of legal instructions they received Wednesday from Judge Juan Merchan.

Trump is the first former U.S. president to be charged with a crime.

The records at issue in the case relate to reimbursements by Trump and the Trump Organization to Cohen, the former fixer who paid Daniels to keep quiet about a sexual tryst she said she had with Trump in 2006.

Cohen testified during the trial that Trump directed him to pay off Daniels before the 2016 election to prevent her story from damaging his presidential campaign.

Trump, who is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, faces three other pending criminal cases.

In two of those cases, Trump is charged with crimes related to his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

One of those cases is in federal court in Washington, D.C., and the other is in Georgia state court in Atlanta.

Trump is charged in federal court in Florida with crimes related to his retention of classified government records after he left the White House in January 2021 and to his attempts to prevent those documents from being recovered by federal officials.

Trump also faces a civil judgment in Manhattan Supreme Court ordering him to pay more than $450 million in damages to the state of New York after he was held liable for business fraud involving the Trump Organization and its valuation of real estate assets.

He also faces two civil defamation verdicts by federal juries that awarded damages of nearly $90 million to writer E. Jean Carroll, who testified that Trump raped her in the mid-1990s in a dressing room of a Manhattan department store.

Trump is appealing the verdicts in the three civil cases.