Donald Trump's legal battle has been marked by cliffhangers as his defendants continued to drag out the drama in courtrooms up and down the East Coast. Finally, on Thursday, the nation learned the outcome: a New York jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records. Trump is the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime.
The ruling feels momentous, but it comes in neither the most important nor the most legally compelling of the cases against Trump. Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal indictments for both the voter fraud scheme and the January 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol involve alleged attacks on democracy. The Mar-a-Lago documents case concerns Trump's unfitness to be commander in chief. The obstruction of justice charge, for allegedly trying to mislead investigators about hiding documents from the White House, seems clear-cut. But those cases remain unresolved as Trump has persuaded various judges and the Supreme Court to consider time-consuming procedural issues. Thursday's ruling, by contrast, concerned a scheme to pay hush money to adult film actresses.
This is not to say that Thursday's result was unfair or the result of a “rigged and dishonorable trial,” as Trump declared. The Biden campaign's decision to hold a press conference outside the courthouse on Tuesday was doubly disappointing, as it contradicted key facts. While Trump and his allies have denounced the investigation against him as a “witch hunt” and any finding against him as “rigged,” this trial demonstrated the opposite: an investigation was conducted, an indictment was filed, a jury was selected, and, in an orderly trial, Trump received due process of law. Only after six weeks of testimony from 22 witnesses and ample corroborating evidence was a verdict handed down.
The jurors appear to have fulfilled their oath to carefully evaluate the case by taking the time to carefully review the relevant testimony and jury instructions, and also accepted an important civic duty under trying circumstances: being prohibited from discussing a highly publicized issue with friends and family, and risking backlash no matter what the ultimate decision.
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Judge Juan Marchan conducted the trial fairly, despite Trump's attacks on him and his background as a Colombian immigrant. “You hate Donald Trump. Look at him. Look at where he comes from,” the former president said. Judge Marchan's instructions to the jury were neither overly lenient nor overly stingy. The jury was allowed to convict Trump of a felony for falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election by illegal means, but the 12 jurors could not agree on what those illegal means were. They still had to agree that their intent was to sway the vote, a high bar. The hush money he instructed could have been paid for non-criminal purposes, such as hiding an affair from a wife or to avoid public humiliation for himself or his family.
The jury clearly found otherwise. The importance of this sordid case perhaps has less to do with the danger the defendant poses than the fact that 12 of Trump's allies sentenced a wealthy former president. This alone shows that even the most privileged in society are subject to the same basic legal procedures that other Americans face.
In a statement after the conviction, Trump noted the obvious political importance of the trial and said voters would decide on November 5. Judge Marchan scheduled his ruling for July 11, just before Trump accepts the Republican presidential nomination in Milwaukee. The sentencing process could upend campaign plans, but it's unclear when or if Trump will face specific consequences, since he has already said he will appeal.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to use the case against him to his political advantage. As in the trial, he declared Thursday that “this whole country is rigged right now.” His supporters likely already believed that. Many other Americans didn't need the trial to form a firm view that Trump is amoral, or worse. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released Thursday suggested most Americans would view a guilty verdict as light. That may have been the day's most surprising finding.
In a way, Trump is right: Even now, his ultimate accountability, his final verdict, may have to come by a different means: through the ballot box, and not by a jury of 12 people but by millions of voters.
