SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Guilty on all 34 felony counts - a first for an American president and uncharted territory for a presidential election.
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DETROW: From NPR, this is TRUMP'S TRIALS. I'm Scott Detrow.
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting) We love Trump.
DONALD TRUMP: This is a persecution.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: He actually just stormed out of the courtroom.
JACK SMITH: Innocent till proven guilty in a court of law.
DETROW: Thursday evening, a foreman on a New York jury said 12 Americans had found a once and possibly future U.S. president guilty on 34 counts in a criminal trial. Donald Trump will face sentencing on July 11, just days before Republicans convene in Milwaukee to nominate him for President for the third election in a row. How did we get here?
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DETROW: It starts in 2006 when Trump meets adult film star Stormy Daniels at a Lake Tahoe golf tournament and allegedly have sex. A decade later, in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Trump's White House bid is seemingly upended by a leaked tape where he talks in crude terms about forcing himself on women.
Trump's orbit rushes to quell any other unseemly stories that may be out there. Lawyer Michael Cohen orchestrates a payoff. For $130,000, Daniels would sell her story to the National Enquirer, which has no intention of publishing an article. Cohen makes the payment with his own money, and weeks later, Trump is elected president.
Fast-forward to 2017. Trump is president. He meets with Michael Cohen in the Oval Office, and according to Cohen's testimony, they talk about reimbursements for that payout. Soon after, Cohen submits invoices to Trump. They go into Trump's ledgers, and Trump cuts checks characterized as legal retainers. And that is where the crime is - the falsification of business documents in an attempt to cover up another crime.
The story gets out in 2018. Cohen eventually pleads guilty to federal campaign finance violations and ultimately serves jail time. But federal and New York prosecutors declined to charge Trump, who's still in office.
Then in 2022, Alvin Bragg becomes Manhattan district attorney. He announces he's going to look into the hush money case. In March 2023, a New York Grand jury indicts Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. A little more than a year later, the trial begins. And now, five months before another presidential election, Trump is a convicted felon.
There is legal fallout to this. There is political fallout to this. There are a lot of questions we are trying to sort out because we have never been in this situation before. We will talk about it all after the break with two NPR experts who have been following this all along. Stick around.
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DETROW: We are back, and I'm joined by national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson as well as senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Hey, there.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: So I'm going to ask this to both of you. We've all had a night to sleep on it. What are you thinking about today? What's the big picture in your head? Domenico, I'll start with you.
MONTANARO: Well, I mean, you know, I mean, I'm trying not to be jaded politically, but I'm not sure what's going to change - I mean, politically, I'm thinking about. I mean, this is still a huge moment in American history. No doubt about it.
And, you know, all of the polls going in may not be the polls coming out of this because I think there were a lot of people who weren't paying that close attention to this. They are going to be now looking at, what does conviction mean? What was going on?
And they're going to be going to their favorite news sources to find out how they feel about that. For a lot of Republican leaning independents, that might mean Fox News and conservative media, which might radicalize them to be more in the pro-Trump camp, actually.
DETROW: Yeah.
MONTANARO: And then there could be others who kind of sit there and wonder, gee, I don't know. I wasn't really thinking about this very much. Maybe it could move them.
But honestly, it's going to likely be at the margins. And this is not what he wanted at all - was to have his name mentioned in the same sentence as convicted felon, and he can't change that, likely, before the election.
DETROW: Carrie, what about you?
JOHNSON: Yeah, I'm thinking two things. One is about the 12 people who reached a unanimous verdict against the former president of the United States in less than two days' time and, you know - what's happening with them in the aftermath of this incredible public service that was so hard and may reverberate with them for a long time to come.
And then the second thing I'm thinking about is the contrast between the kind of hot house rhetoric we've heard from Donald Trump and some of his allies who have also made their way inside courtrooms in recent years - people like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. And, you know, these people say lots and lots of things when they're not on the witness stand or not on trial.
And at the same time, when we have had actual juries examine the contentions of prosecutors in these cases - and juries have found people like Donald Trump and Paul Manafort guilty. So even though we hear the former president give lengthy remarks again today about how the system was biased against him and how everybody was so unfair, juries have seen this remarkably differently.
DETROW: And yeah, I think there is something to that for all the jadedness - of 12 people drawn at random. They didn't volunteer to be there, sitting there for weeks, taking it really seriously by all accounts and reaching a decision like this.
JOHNSON: It's enormously important. And as many people said yesterday, it is a signal that the law can be applied against anyone, whether, you know, you're a man on the street or the former president of the United States of America.
MONTANARO: You know, a good point I saw yesterday was somebody talking about how if one of these jurors actually decided that they were going to be the one person who made this a hung jury and didn't convict Trump, they could actually be a conservative star. I mean, there's probably, like, a lot of money that could have been made off of something like that.
And that's not what anyone chose to do. They chose to do what a jury does, which is listen to the facts, see what the evidence is and make their decision, even though, you know, a lot of them, frankly, could be in jeopardy threat-wise.
I mean, it's a very nerve-wracking situation. I can't imagine being a juror, having to go into that courtroom with Donald Trump, having to then affirm my decision out loud with him standing feet away from me. That had to be - it had to be very scary.
JOHNSON: You know, we know from jury selection that at least one member of this jury reads Truth Social - you know, Trump's social media network - and that the media diet for some of these jurors, you know, contained stuff that's very pro-Trump. And just like in that trial in Virginia all those years ago against Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, where one of the jurors said she believed in Make America Great Again, she still decided to convict Paul Manafort.
DETROW: Yeah.
JOHNSON: That's what this system is supposed to be about.
MONTANARO: Yeah.
DETROW: And yet, we saw...
MONTANARO: And yet (laughter).
DETROW: ...Trump and his allies preemptively, for months and months, attack the system - say that this was a corrupt system, that this was all about politics. This was about Joe Biden and his allies seeing that Trump is leading in the polls and trying to take him down. You saw this drum beat every single day. Trump came out in to the hallway of this court house and said that. And after the verdict was reached, those messages just amplified - from Donald Trump to the speaker of the House to many other key Republicans - just trying to tear down the judicial system. Carrie, that's going to continue through the election. How important to you is this moment for the rule of law? What comes next?
JOHNSON: Well, the system worked, according to the district attorney, Alvin Bragg. He said they did their jobs, and so did the jury. And Trump has every right to appeal. He says he's going to appeal, and he may have really good grounds to appeal this verdict in New York.
That said, attacks on the system are dangerous - literally dangerous. We have the attorney general and the FBI director - the FBI director who is a Republican and part of a...
DETROW: Appointed by Trump.
JOHNSON: Appointed by Trump, who have said these attacks on public servants - people like judges, prosecutors, jurors - are dangerous. We do know that, in the past, some people have answered calls from the former president and others. We know a guy stormed the FBI field office in Ohio after the Mar-a-Lago search. These words have consequences. And I'm a little bit worried, as are senior Justice Department officials, about the consequences of some of this dangerous rhetoric, which, by the way, has been adopted by most Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
MONTANARO: Very quickly, by the way...
DETROW: Yeah.
MONTANARO: ...It's really kind of surprising - maybe not surprising, actually, but actually kind of shocking still that it continues to happen - that Republicans are so quick - I mean, we had the speaker of the House say it was a shameful day. You had every one of these Republican officials who are sort of engaging in this unofficial audition to be Trump's vice president saying that they're hearing from constituents that this is political witch hunt, and Democrats should be ashamed and that - you know, even going so far as to say Joe Biden was ordering the assassination of Donald Trump because of the search at Mar-a-Lago in the classified documents case, which is completely baseless and ridiculous...
DETROW: He wasn't there.
MONTANARO: ...And he wasn't even there that day.
DETROW: And they - Carrie, they timed that - raid isn't even the word - around the fact that Trump wouldn't be there.
JOHNSON: As with so much of this rhetoric coming from the Trump camp - it's exactly wrong...
DETROW: Yeah.
JOHNSON: ...OK? So the FBI coordinated with the Secret Service in advance. Trump was not on the premises at Mar-a-Lago. The FBI agents who conducted this operation were exercising - or authorized by a federal judge to conduct this search. And they did not wear FBI badges. They wore khaki pants and polo shirts so as not to call attention to the search. Donald Trump himself is the one who announced to the world that...
DETROW: Right.
JOHNSON: ...He'd been searched.
DETROW: And this is an important thing, and this is one of those statements that you say and it feels hyperbolic, but it is just based in fact. That's an important thing to flag because, if you look historically, false claims of assassination attempts are, time and time again, things that people will do in an attempt to crack down on civil liberties to try and seize power in an unlawful way. And that's just worth pointing out because there's a pretty long track record throughout world history of that being the case.
MONTANARO: It's like the ultimate victimhood thing that Trump has tried to do. I mean, he's used grievance - white grievance, in particular - martyrdom to really fuel his political ambitions. And it's no different with this trial. I mean, immediately after the verdict came out, you know, you had a fundraising appeal from the Trump campaign with a massive guilty in the social media post. I'm a political prisoner - way harder, by the way, going after it and calling attention to it than the Biden campaign.
DETROW: Right. We could keep talking about this dynamic for a while, and I'm sure we will later. But Carrie, let's talk about what happens next. After the verdict was read, Judge Merchan said that sentencing will happen on July 11. What's going to happen that day, Carrie, and what sort of sentences are possible?
JOHNSON: Well, what's going to happen in advance of that day is Trump's lead defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, has said he's going to be filing some additional court papers, seeking to set aside the verdict. That seems unlikely at this stage. Trump is going to have to sit down with a member of the court operations team and answer some questions so the court officers can prepare a report for Judge Merchan.
And then on July 11, the judge has a number of options before him - home confinement, probation, nothing, basically, up to four years of incarceration on each count. And these are low-level felonies under New York State law. Trump is 77 years old. He has no prior convictions. And so the judge is going to have to balance some of those facts with the idea that the former president repeatedly violated the gag order Judge Merchan put on the case, and he has condemned the judge in the harshest possible terms, today calling him a devil at his news conference in New York.
DETROW: Is it fair to say that a jail sentence is unlikely, or do we just not know?
JOHNSON: Here's the challenge. Picture in your mind the former president, who remains a protectee of the Secret Service, locked up somewhere with Secret Service agents next to him. Is that going to happen? It's really hard to imagine. But so many things about Donald Trump have been hard to imagine and have come to pass. This is a hard call for the judge. I'm not sure which way he's going to go on it.
DETROW: Domenico, as soon as the date was said and we got the word, it was just like the peak clash of these dual worlds where, on one hand, somebody is now a convicted felon. On the other hand, somebody is a leading contender to become president of the United States.
July 11, he's sentenced. Just a few days later, July 15, Republicans gather in Milwaukee to nominate Donald Trump for president for the third consecutive election. What a contrast. And there's absolutely no world that Republicans are going to say - wait a second, should we find another candidate?
MONTANARO: Yeah. What a way to think about it - the third consecutive election. I don't think I had actually absorbed that completely. But, yeah, I mean...
DETROW: 'Cause you've been swimming in it.
MONTANARO: ...July 11 being the sentencing date, and then, just four days later, the convention happening. And what are conventions for? They're for shoring up your base, for making sure that the house is in order, for making sure there's no cracks in the foundation, and they're certainly going to do that. They're going to use this. Just days after the sentencing, you know that this is going to be the main - almost the theme for the Republican Convention. I would be surprised if that's not what a lot of it is about. You know, you see mugshot T-shirts and proud to be American blaring through the speakers. I mean, this is what that campaign is going to be about - almost a celebration of him being persecuted...
DETROW: Yeah.
MONTANARO: ...Is the way that they're going to look at it. You know, then I'm looking at, obviously, before that, the June 27 debate. How do both Trump and Biden deal with this?
You know, and then you've got the Democratic Convention. And what our polling had found was that younger voters in particular were among the most likely to say that they could have their minds changed one way or the other based on a verdict. One in 5 said that they'd be more likely to vote for Trump if he was found not guilty. One in 5 said that they'd be less likely to vote for him if he's found guilty.
Now, some of that is partisans. That doesn't exactly mean that that's how they're going to vote. But with Biden struggling with this group, a key pillar Democratic group, is he able to use this conviction to move them at all and to shore them up by or after or during the convention?
DETROW: Carrie, we've talked about sentencing. We've kind of talked in passing about appeals. There's definitely going to be appeals. There was a lot of conversation about the areas those appeals could focus on, particularly the jury instructions. Can you explain why that is and what kind of shape you think the appeals could take?
JOHNSON: Well, the jury instructions are super boring often for reporters covering these trials, but they're also super important because jurors take them so seriously.
So if there's a point in a jury instruction that's confusing or vague or could lead jurors to kind of disagree with each other or potentially violated defendant's constitutional rights to notice over what they're being charged with, for instance - those things are often very fruitful for defense lawyers seeking to overturn a conviction and at least win a new trial. And that's what Todd Blanche is going to be trying to do for Donald Trump, you know?
There's the testimony of Stormy Daniels, which ventured into territory involving the night that Stormy Daniels and the former president allegedly spent together, that perhaps even the judge didn't want to hear, and questions about whether that went too far and may have improperly influenced some of the jurors.
There's some complaining that Trump has done today about the venue in New York and the judge having alleged conflicts. That may feature in a potential Trump appeal but seems less likely to meet with success than things based on the law and the application of the law, like the jury instructions, the Daniels testimony and a few other things.
DETROW: Since we have spent so much of this year talking about legal timelines and how they match or don't match with election timelines, any sense how long an appeal like that typically takes to get heard, to get a ruling on?
JOHNSON: Oh, gosh. It could take months, if not more than a year, and the question is whether the intermediate appeals court in New York state wants to expedite matters. Even if they do, Trump has signaled that if he has the grounds to, he'd like to take this all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and there's really no way that that can get done before November, it seems to me.
DETROW: Carrie, last question to you - speaking of the Supreme Court, speaking of appeals, speaking of timelines that can be slow when there's an election - can you give us a real quick roundup on where the other cases stand? We now have one case that has reached a conclusion. There are, of course, three more criminal cases out there.
JOHNSON: Three more cases, two by the special counsel, Jack Smith - the case in Florida is bogged down as Judge Aileen Cannon takes a very long time to decide central issues involving classified information and other claims that Trump has made.
The January 6 trial here in D.C. is completely frozen. It's in the freezer, waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether Trump should enjoy some form of immunity because he was the former president and in the White House before and during January 6, 2021.
And finally, in Fulton County, Ga., that case is up on appeal, too, largely over the actions of the district attorney Fani Willis and her prosecutor at the time, Nathan Wade - their personal relationship, their financial relationship. None of these things looks to be getting off the ground in any serious way before the election.
DETROW: Domenico, I want to give you the final thought. For a while, we ended our podcasts with me asking, did anything happen this week that could materially alter these cases or the election? I feel like that's a clear yes on this week.
MONTANARO: Well, or not...
DETROW: Yeah.
MONTANARO: ...Materially change anything when it comes to the election, which is what I've been hearing from Republican and Democratic strategists, and feeling like, you know, sure, let's wait a couple of weeks to see what the polling results show and how people are. But, you know, I mean, views of Trump and Biden are so locked in.
DETROW: Yeah.
MONTANARO: And there's really such a slim, slim, slim percentage of people who are truly persuadable that it might not make a huge difference. But, you know, at the margins, that's where this election is likely to be won or lost, so it maybe makes a key difference in that case.
DETROW: Domenico Montanaro, Carrie Johnson, thanks so much.
JOHNSON: Happy to do it.
MONTANARO: You're welcome.
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DETROW: We'll be back next week with another episode of TRUMP'S TRIALS. Thanks to our supporters who hear the show sponsor-free. If that is not you - still could be. You can sign up at plus.npr.org or subscribe on our show page at Apple Podcasts.
This show is produced by Tyler Bartlam and edited by Adam Raney, Krishnadev Calamur and Steve Drummond. Our executive producers are Beth Donovan and Sami Yenigun. Eric Marrapodi is NPR's vice president of news programming. I'm Scott Detrow. Thanks for listening to TRUMP'S TRIALS from NPR.
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