The tycoon after the decision: “The true verdict will be on November 5 by the people”
The Speaker of the House of Representatives says it is "a shameful day in American History"
The twelve members of the jury in the first criminal trial against former President of the United States Donald Trump have found the mogul guilty of 34 counts of falsification of business records within a plot in which he would have tried to hide the payment of $130,000 to the former porn actress ‘Stormy Daniels’ to buy his silence.
The jury, which has been asked to review several parts of the testimony and listen to the judge’s instructions again, has deliberated for more than nine hours in two days to reach this conclusion, as reported by the American network NBC News.
Judge Juan Merchan has thanked the jury for their service and has set the reading of the sentence for next July 11 at 10:00 in the morning (local time). “You have given this matter the attention it deserved and I want to thank you,” he added.
With this conviction, Trump becomes the first United States president to be criminally convicted in a case that the former president has denounced on numerous occasions as a “witch hunt” against him instigated by the current Biden Administration.
The magnate stated as soon as he left the courtroom that it was a “rigged” trial led by a “corrupt” judge. “The true verdict will be on November 5 by the people,” he said, referring to the presidential elections.
Trump has also described the process as a “shame” and has insisted on his thesis that the case has been instigated by the Biden Administration “to hurt an opponent” ahead of the presidential elections. “We are a nation in decline,” he highlighted.
The former US president has been fined on numerous occasions during the trial for violating the gag order that Merchan imposed against him due to the magnate’s comments against witnesses on his social networks, especially against his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who carried out the payment to ‘Daniels’.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the case against Trump for inflating the assets of the Trump Organization – for which the magnate was sentenced to pay millions of dollars – has stressed in above the law.”
REPUBLICAN REACTIONS
The former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., has highlighted on the social network X that Merchan’s reading of the sentence occurs “four days before the Republican Convention.” “They don’t even try to hide the electoral interference,” he said.
Likewise, in another message he stressed that “the Democrats have succeeded in their years-long attempt to turn the United States into a third world shithole.” November 5 is our last chance to save it,” he said.
For his part, the president of the United States House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson, stated this Thursday that it is “a shameful day in the History of the United States”, since Trump’s condemnation is part of a movement ” purely political” by the Democratic Party.
“Democrats have applauded when they have condemned the leader of the opposing party on ridiculous charges, based on the testimony of a disqualified convicted felon,” the House Speaker said on the aforementioned social network.
In this sense, Johnson has highlighted that the use of the justice system “as a weapon” has been “a hallmark of the Biden Administration.” “Today’s decision is further proof that Democrats will stop at nothing to silence dissent and crush their political opponents,” he argued.
THE CASE AGAINST TRUMP
The investigation was initiated by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, following an alleged plan by the mogul to bury in the media several sexual scandals during the campaign for the 2016 presidential elections.
In May 2011, Clifford agreed to tell her story to a magazine in exchange for $15,000, although she later explained in a 2018 interview with the CBS television program ’60 Minutes’ that a man threatened her while she was with daughter to a gymnastics class and decided not to do it.
Trump’s emergence into politics five years later led to the dusting off of the scandals that had accompanied the magnate during his long public career. The former porn actress ended up signing a $130,000 confidentiality agreement in exchange for not revealing this alleged extramarital relationship in 2006 and claimed that she did it because she feared for her safety.
According to prosecutors, Trump’s then-lawyer Cohen, who was also vice president of the Trump Organization, arranged the payment to Clifford by providing the amount from his own pocket and the former president reimbursed him for the money hidden in various legal expenses within the records of the company.
The scheme also includes two more secret payments: about $150,000 for the model Karen McDougal, with whom he had supposedly had an extramarital relationship, and $30,000 for a former Trump Organization employee who claimed to know a story of dubious veracity about a child he would have had out of wedlock.
Both would have received the aforementioned payments so that the tabloid National Enquirer, published by American Media Inc. (AMI) and favorable to the former president, could buy the rights to these two stories so that they would not come to light during the 2016 campaign.
The tycoon was charged in the bribery case in March 2023. The former president also faces a federal case against him for trying to overturn the result of the 2020 elections, in which the current president, Joe Biden, won.
