Former President Donald Trump has been convicted of 34 counts of felony falsifying business records by a Manhattan jury on Thursday, 30 May. He is the first President in US history to be convicted in a criminal court.
The jury found that President Trump acted illegally when he paid $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels in October 2016, disguised as legal fees, to keep quiet about their extramarital affair ahead of the election. Interestingly, Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney at the time who handled the payments was not charged in connection with the case. In fact, he was one of the prosecution’s star witnesses, despite having a litany of convictions on his record, which includes one for making false statements to a financial institution.
Prime Minister Orbán reacted to the verdict on X, exhorting the former US President to ‘keep on fighting’.
I’ve known President @realDonaldTrump to be a man of honour. As President, he always put America first, he commanded respect around the world and used this respect to build peace. Let the people make their verdict this November! Keep on fighting, Mr. President!
— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) May 31, 2024
Miklós Szánthó, Director General of the Center for Fundamental Rights, the organizer of CPAC Hungary 2024, had this to say, also on X:
🇺🇸👍🇭🇺We are with Trump❗
— Miklós Szánthó (@MiklosSzantho) May 31, 2024
He will be the 47th President of the USA and he will bring peace! And there is nothing a Democrat show trial can do to stop him. pic.twitter.com/qP8g0CazVx
President Trump was indicted in April 2023. The trial started almost exactly a year later, on 15 April 2024. President Trump has been claiming bias on the part of the president judge, Juan M. Merchan, from the start.
Judge Merchan forbade the defence to make any argument of alleged prosecutorial misconduct,
and placed a restrictive gag order on the defendant—but none on any of the prosecutor’s witnesses, despite the defence filing a motion to do that.
Judge Merchan was also revealed to have donated a small amount to President Biden’s 2020 campaign, and his daughter is employed by a political campaign and fundraising firm working with Democrats. Needless to say, all prosecutors elected in the Democrat stronghold state of New York are highly liberal-progressive. So is the electorate in Manhattan, New York City, New York, where nearly 90 per cent of voters backed President Biden in the 2020 election. The Trump legal team filed a change of venue on the last day of jury selection to move to a more evenly-split county in New York State, however, a New York Appellate Court denied that motion in late May.
Jury deliberation started on Wednesday, 29 May. Judge Merchan raised some eyebrows in conservative circles with his jury instruction, part of which read that the jury does not have to agree unanimously on what was the underlying crime Donald Trump tried to conceal with his payment. However, as Sean Hannity pointed out on his Fox News show, a 1948 ruling by the US Supreme Court in the Andres v. United States case states that ‘In criminal cases this requirement of unanimity extends to all issues—character or degree of the crime, guilt, and punishment’.
This issue points to another problem with the case. Just simply mislabelling ‘hush money’ to a mistress as legal fees would be a misdemeanour. In order to make it a felony, the prosecution had to convince a jury that President Trump did so to conceal another underlying crime—something which, as even some left-wing legal analysts have admitted, they had a weak case for (and they never even stated what that alleged crime would be).
In another Fox News segment,
UC Berkley law professor John Yoo, whom Hungarian Conservative recently interviewed, also offered expert commentary on the case,
joining the cable channel live via satellite while attending a rule of law conference hosted by the Danube Institute in Budapest, Hungary. He too pointed to the obvious flaws with prosecution star witness Michael Cohen’s credibility, even saying Cohen could be ‘the worst kind of witness any US or state attorney ever wants to build their whole case on’. He also stated that the prosecution relied solely on Cohen to prove Donald Trump’s criminal intent.
Will Donald Trump Go to Jail?
Donald Trump’s sentencing is scheduled for 11 July. He has been convicted of a Class E felony, the least severe in New York State. However, it can still carry prison time. The sentence will depend entirely on Judge Merchan’s discretion, he will only have sentencing guidelines for reference. Donald Trump is 77 years old with no prior convictions, convicted of a non-violent crime, which should work in his favour. Still,
Judge Merchan has the power to put him behind bars in July.
Donald Trump has already announced he is appealing the case. However, sentences still have to be served while the appellate process is taking place. The judge has shown some restraint in the past. For violating his gag order, he punished President trump with a fine, as opposed to jail time.
Technically, being imprisoned would not bar Donald Trump from running for President. Socialist candidate Eugene Debs ran in the 1920 election while serving a prison sentence in Atlanta, Georgia for violating the Sedition Act, and managed to get 3.4 per cent of the popular vote.
Read more on the Trump case:
