A jury selected from a pool of New York City voters that gave President Joe Biden nearly 90 percent of the vote in 2020 convicted Donald Trump on 34 counts of bookkeeping fraud on Thursday, following a trial that many legal experts said was improper and rigged against the former president from the beginning.
Biden donor Judge Juan Merchan will begin preparations to sentence Democrats’ top political enemy — a sentence that could include up to 136 years in prison — after the jury he coached through deliberations claimed that Trump falsified invoices, falsified ledger entries, and falsely recorded repayment checks as legal retainers.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump after claiming the former president violated the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) when his former attorney Michael Cohen paid pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair. According to Bragg, because the cash changed hands ahead of the 2016 election, it should have been publicly reported as a campaign expenditure.
Nondisclosure deals like the one that served as the basis of Trump’s payments are perfectly legal. The payment for which Bragg is prosecuting Trump doesn’t meet the threshold for misreporting business expenses, much less amount to any criminal activity above a misdemeanor, so the former president pled not guilty. Yet Bragg, who campaigned on vengeance against the Republican, ignored the FEC and Department of Justice’s deliberate decision not to charge Trump for the same payment and pursued a felony prosecution.
Several notably anti-Trump legal experts and media mouthpieces warned that Bragg’s case was weak and reeked of partisanship. Yet, that didn’t stop Merchan, equipped with a “rabid pro-Democrat bias,” from entertaining Bragg’s demands and gagging Trump.
In addition to limiting former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith’s testimony, Merchan also told the jury during deliberations that they were not required to agree on Trump’s alleged crimes to vote guilty.
Witness and convicted liar Michael Cohen admitted under oath during the trial to stealing tens of thousands of dollars during his tenure as Trump’s lawyer but it is Trump who will face the consequences of the partisan judge’s wrath on July 11, less than one week before the Republican National Convention.
Despite Democrats’ best attempts to tear Trump away from the 2024 presidential campaign trail with kangaroo court business and brand him as a convicted felon, polling suggests Democrats’ lawfare against the presidential candidate does not affect the majority of voters’ opinions about the Republican. In fact, approximately 15 percent said a jury conviction like this one makes them more likely to vote for Trump.
