US 2024 election facing bumpy road after Trump’s guilty verdict
The 2024 US presidential election is in uncharted territory after former President Donald Trump is found guilty of the entire 34 felonies in his hush money trial, the first American head of state in US history to be convicted of a crime.
The verdict was handed down after some 10 hours of deliberations on Thursday in the Manhattan courtroom in New York where Trump has been on trial for the past six weeks over falsifying business records to hide a payment meant to silence adult movie actress Stormy Daniels and prevent her from publicizing their sexual encounters.
In addition to the hush money case, the businessman-turned-politician faces three more serious criminal indictments over his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden and keeping top-secret documents at his home in Florida.
Judge Juan Merchan thanked the jurors for their service in the weeks-long trial, saying, “You gave this matter the attention it deserved, and I want to thank you for that,”
Merchan set sentencing for July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in the midwestern state of Wisconsin, where Trump is due to receive the party's formal nomination for the November 5 vote.
The presumptive Republican nominee could in theory be sentenced to four years behind bars for each count but is more likely to receive probation.
'We'll fight to the end'
Speaking to reporters in the hallway outside the Manhattan courtroom, Trump reacted angrily to the jury's unanimous verdict and railed against the judge.
"This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt," he said, reiterating the criticism he has leveled at the court since the trial began.
Stressing that the case is "far from over," the presumptive GOP nominee said, "The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people, and they know what happened here and everybody knows what happened here. We'll fight to the end."
However, Biden's campaign praised the verdict in a statement and underlined that Trump needs to be defeated in November.
“In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law," said the campaign's communications director, Michael Tyler, but the "verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box."
The conviction does not bar Trump from continuing his campaign or becoming president, and he can still vote for himself in his home state of Florida as long as he stays out of prison in New York state.
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