Opinion

Why the Trump verdict matters

Dana Milbank: Anybody who says they know what the impact is going to be is lying about this, because we’ve never had a convicted felon running for president on the top of a major-party ticket before.

Karen Tumulty: A lot of people had cast doubt on the idea of even bringing this trial. Some people called it the runt of the litter. You, Ruth, were not such a fan of this prosecution. Did your thinking change?

Marcus: Well, I have been a doubt-caster, but I want to put this trial in a larger context. And I think this is a potential argument that the Biden campaign could be making. Which is: It was unfortunate that the weakest and, to some extent, the least significant of these cases was the first and now it appears the only one to go to trial before the election. If the process had been allowed to play out in a way that was fairer, Donald Trump would not be a once-convicted felon in New York state court. He would be, by the time of the election in all likelihood, a thrice-convicted felon — convicted in Florida federal court of obstructing justice and mishandling classified documents, convicted in D.C. District Court of attempting to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power in the 2020 election.

It was, I thought, the weakest case legally because of some really boring complexities of New York state law. But that doesn’t mean that the underlying facts were not really disturbing. He, in league with Michael Cohen and others, conspired to keep salient, important and potentially decisive information from voters, in the form of covering up his relationship, such as it was, with Stormy Daniels. He paid her off to keep her quiet. He did that precisely at the time when he was most politically exposed. Voters did not have the information that they should have had to decide whether he was fit to be president in 2016, and that was really bad and corrupt conduct. So the fact that we kind of shoehorned it into a New York false business records case, it may be kind of legally disturbing, but it’s not morally disturbing.

Listen to the full conversation here: