Trump will be sentenced on July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention

A New York jury on Thursday found Donald Trump guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records – the first time a former US president has been convicted of a crime.

The jury returned its verdict in this historic case after 9.5 hours of deliberations, which began on Wednesday.

He will be sentenced on July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention. He faces penalties ranging from a fine to four years in prison on each count, although he is expected to be sentenced for the offenses concurrently and not consecutively.

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“It was a disgrace. It was a rigged trial by a conflicted and corrupt judge,” Trump later fumed to reporters.

The verdict was read in the Manhattan courtroom where Trump has been on trial since April 15. He had pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the trial. final weeks of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump looked down, his eyes narrowed, as the jury foreman read the word “guilty” for each count.

The judge thanked the jurors for their service during the weeks-long trial. “You gave this case the attention it deserved and I want to thank you for that,” Judge Juan Merchan told them. Trump appeared sullen toward the jurors as they walked beside him leaving the courtroom.

Trump's lawyer, Todd Blanche, filed a motion for acquittal after the jury left the room, which the judge denied.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would not comment on what type of sentence he might seek, saying his office would discuss it in court documents.

“Although this defendant is unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial and ultimately today in this verdict in the same manner as every other case brought before courtroom doors – in following the facts and the law, doing so without fear or favor,” Bragg said. Asked for his reaction to the verdict, Bragg, who was inundated with threats from Trump supporters during the investigation, said: “I did my job. We did our job.”

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, immediately launched an out-of-the-news fundraiser, posting on his website that he was “a political prisoner” and urging his supporters to donate money.

Legal experts told NBC News that even if Trump were sentenced to prison, he would most likely be allowed to stay out of prison while he appeals the verdict, a process that could take months or longer . That means the sentence would likely not interfere with his ability to accept the Republican nomination for president at the July convention.

And it probably wouldn't impact his ability to get elected. “There are no qualifications other than those of the Constitution,” Chuck Rosenberg, a former U.S. attorney and legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, said after Thursday's verdict.

President Joe Biden's campaign welcomed the verdict in a statement, but stressed that Trump must be defeated in November.

“In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law,” campaign communications director Michael Tyler said, but “the verdict does not change the fact that the American people faces a simple reality that there is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: through the ballot box.

In his closing argument this week, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the jury that “the law is the law, and it applies equally to everyone.” There is no particular standard for this defendant.

“You, the jury, have the ability to hold the defendant accountable,” Steinglass said.

Trump had argued that the prosecutor's office had no case and that there had been no crime. “President Trump is innocent. He committed no crime,” Blanche said in her closing statement, arguing that the payments made to Cohen were legitimate.

Prosecutors said the disguised payment to Cohen was part of a “long-planned and coordinated plot to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal spending, to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior, using falsified means.” company documents and bank forms to hide these payments along the way.

“It was electoral fraud. Plain and simple,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said in his opening statement.

Although Trump was not charged with conspiracy, prosecutors argued that he caused the falsification of records because he was trying to cover up a violation of state election law — and that the falsification of business records with the intent to cover up another crime reduces the offense from a misdemeanor to a misdemeanor. a crime.

Trump was convicted after a sensational weeklong trial that included combative testimony from Cohen, Trump's self-described former fixer, and Daniels, who testified that she had a sexual relationship with Trump in 2006 after met at a celebrity golf tournament. Trump denied the claim, and his lawyer suggested that Cohen acted on his own because he thought it would make “the boss” happy.

Other witnesses included former White House staffers, including adviser Hope Hicks, former Trump Organization executives and former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker.

Trump did not take the witness stand to offer his own account of what happened, even though he proclaimed before the trial began that he would “absolutely” testify. The defense's main witness was Robert Costello, an attorney Cohen considered retaining in 2018. Costello, who said Cohen told him Trump had nothing to do with paying the Daniels, put Merchan in anger by making disrespectful comments and faces on the stand. At one point, the judge left the courtroom during Costello's testimony and threatened to hold him in contempt.

Cohen said he lied to Costello because he didn't trust him and that he lied to others about Trump's involvement at the time because he wanted to protect his former boss.

Cohen was the only witness to testify about Trump's direct involvement in the $130,000 payment and subsequent repayment plan. Blanche spent days challenging his credibility, getting Cohen to admit he had a history of lying, including under oath.

Cohen said he received the money from Daniels as part of a series of payments from Trump throughout 2017, which the Trump Organization characterized as payments pursuant to an engagement agreement “to legal services rendered.

Prosecutors said no such agreement existed and Cohen's version of events was supported by documentary evidence and testimony.

Blanche argued that the series of checks President Trump paid to Cohen in 2017 “was not a reward to Mr. Cohen for the money he gave to Ms. Daniels” and that he was being paid for his legal work as Trump's personal lawyer.

Testimony from Jeff McConney, a former senior vice president at Trump's company, challenged that position. McConney said the company's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, told him that Cohen was reimbursed for a $130,000 payment and that prosecutors seized Weisselberg's handwritten notes on the payment form as evidence. Cohen said Trump agreed to the arrangement in a meeting with him and Weisselberg just days before his inauguration as the 45th president.

Weisselberg did not testify. He is in prison on perjury charges related to his testimony in New York Attorney General Letitia James' civil fraud case against Trump and his company. Cohen, McConney and other witnesses said Weisselberg, who spent decades working for Trump, always sought his approval for major spending.

In total, the prosecution called 20 witnesses, while the defense called two.

Trump had often falsely claimed that the accusations against him were a political concoction orchestrated by Biden to keep him off the campaign trail. But Trump ultimately managed to bring the campaign to court, welcoming among his guests to the court top Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Senators JD Vance of Ohio and Rick Scott of Florida. Trump also used court breaks to tout political messages to his supporters, while his surrogates circumvented Merchan's silence order by attacking witnesses, individual prosecutors and Merchan's daughter.

Merchan fined Trump $10,000 during the trial for violating his order, including attacks on Cohen and Daniels, and warned that he could have him incarcerated if he continued to violate the order.

Cohen celebrated the verdict in an article on writes Cohen.

Trump was indicted in March last year after a year-long investigation by Bragg and his predecessor, Cyrus Vance. The charges are the first ever brought against a former president, although Trump has since been charged and pleaded not guilty in three other cases. None of the three cases – a federal election interference case in Washington, D.C., a state election interference case in Georgia and a federal case alleging mishandling of classified documents and information on the national security – appears likely to be tried before the November 5 presidential election.