Donald Trump’s legal saga has been defined by cliffhangers, as the defendant has managed to keep the drama alive in courtrooms up and down the East Coast. Finally, on Thursday, the public got a denouement: A New York jury found him guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Mr. Trump is the first former president of the United States to be a convicted felon.
Momentous as the verdict feels, it comes in what was neither the most important nor the most legally compelling of the cases against Mr. Trump. Special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution regarding Jan. 6, 2021, involving both the scheme to draw up fraudulent slates of electors and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, implicates an alleged assault on democracy. The Mar-a-Lago classified-documents case cuts to Mr. Trump’s unfitness to serve as commander in chief. The obstruction charge, covering Mr. Trump’s alleged efforts to mislead investigators about his retention of papers from the White House, seems clear-cut. Yet these cases remain unresolved, as Mr. Trump successfully persuaded various judges, and the Supreme Court, to consider time-consuming procedural issues. Thursday’s verdict, by contrast, involved a hush money payment scheme to an adult-film actress.
This is not to say Thursday’s result was illegitimate — or, as Mr. Trump declared, the result of a “rigged, disgraceful trial.” The Biden campaign’s decision to hold a news conference outside the courthouse on Tuesday was doubly unfortunate because it belied an important reality: Contrary to accusations from Mr. Trump and his allies that probes into him are “witch hunts” and any outcome that disfavors him “rigged,” the case showed the opposite. An investigation occurred. An indictment was secured. A jury was selected, and in an orderly trial, Mr. Trump got due process of law. Only with six weeks of testimony from 22 witnesses and ample corroborating evidence was a verdict declared.
The jurors appear to have fulfilled their oath to assess the case with care, taking time to have relevant testimony and jury instructions laboriously reread to them. They also accepted a crucial civic duty amid trying circumstances, forbidden from discussing a subject of widespread attention with their friends and family, and risking blowback for their eventual decision, whichever way it went.
Justice Juan Merchan presided fairly over the trial, despite Mr. Trump’s attacks on him and his history as a Colombian immigrant: “The judge hates Donald Trump. Just take a look. Take a look at him. Take a look at where he comes from,” the former president said. The instructions Justice Merchan gave the jury were neither overly generous to the prosecution nor too stingy; the jurors were permitted to find Mr. Trump guilty of felony falsification of business records in order to influence the 2016 election by unlawful means without the 12 of them agreeing on what those unlawful means were. Nonetheless, they still had to agree that his intent was to swing the vote. That was a high bar. The hush money payment he directed could have been submitted for the noncriminal purpose of hiding an affair from his wife or sparing himself and his family public embarrassment.
The jury obviously found otherwise. The significance of this sordid episode — though perhaps only tangential to the danger the defendant poses — lies in the fact that 12 of Mr. Trump’s fellow citizens rendered their judgment on a wealthy former president. This alone suggests even the most privileged members of society remain subject to the same essential legal procedures other Americans face.
In his post-conviction statement, Mr. Trump alluded to the trial’s obvious political importance, noting that voters will render their judgment on Nov. 5. Justice Merchan scheduled sentencing for July 11 — shortly before Mr. Trump will accept the Republican presidential nomination in Milwaukee. The sentencing process could upend the logistics of campaigning, though Mr. Trump has already said he will appeal, so it’s unclear when or whether he will face tangible consequences.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump continues to use the legal cases against him to make a political case in his favor: Like his trial, he declared on Thursday, “our whole country is being rigged right now.” His supporters probably already believed that; many other Americans did not need a trial to form an equally firm view that Mr. Trump is amoral or worse. An NPR-“PBS NewsHour”-Marist poll released Thursday suggested most Americans would shrug off a conviction. That might have been the most astonishing result of the day.
In a way, Mr. Trump is right: Even now, his ultimate accountability — the ultimate verdict on him — might well have to arrive via a different means, the ballot box. And it will not be up to a jury of 12, but an electorate of millions, to deliver it.
