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A New York jury on Thursday convicted former U.S. President Donald Trump of illegally trying to influence the outcome of the 2016 election that sent him to the White House, unanimously finding him guilty on all 34 felony charges he faced.
The 12-member jury deliberated for two days before returning the verdict against Trump, 77, in the first-ever criminal trial of an American president.
Trump is the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee in the November election against President Joe Biden, the Democrat who defeated him in the 2020 election, but he now also faces the possibility of being placed on probation or imprisoned up to four years.
Trump's sentencing was set for July 11, in the middle of his campaign to return to the White House and just days before the opening of the Republican National Convention on July 15, where he would be formally nominated as the party's 2024 presidential candidate.
Trump defense lawyer Todd Blanche asked that the verdict be overturned, but New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan quickly rejected his request.
Trump is certain to appeal and can continue to run for the presidency. There is no U.S. constitutional prohibition against his becoming president as a convicted felon.
Trump is facing three other indictments, including two accusing him of illegally trying to upend his 2020 election loss. But all three cases are tied up in legal wrangling between his lawyers and prosecutors. As a result, the New York case may be the only one decided before the November election.
Trump was convicted after Michael Cohen, his onetime political fixer-turned-acidic critic, testified that Trump told him to "just do it" - pay $130,000 in hush money days ahead of the 2016 election to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to silence her claim she had a one-night sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump had denied any liaison with Daniels but did not testify in his own defense, as was his right.
A hush money deal is not illegal, but Trump was convicted of all charges in a 34-count indictment accusing him of falsifying business records at his Trump Organization real estate conglomerate to hide the 2017 reimbursement of the hush money payment to Cohen, which Trump claimed was for money owed to Cohen for his legal work.
The Trump defense team claimed Cohen, on his own volition and without Trump's knowledge, wired the hush money to Daniels' lawyer.
The former president had denied the entirety of the indictment against him.
The jury, all New Yorkers chosen randomly from voter registration lists, heard five weeks of testimony from 22 witnesses. Then, on Monday, it listened to hours of starkly contrasting views of the case offered by Blanche and prosecutor Joshua Steinglass.
Blanche, in a three-hour closing argument, assailed Cohen, who testified that he wanted Trump convicted.
The defense lawyer called Cohen, a convicted perjurer and disbarred lawyer, "the greatest liar of all time" and "the human embodiment of reasonable doubt" about the charges against Trump.
Blanche said Cohen's suspect testimony, his theft of $60,000 from Trump's company and a history of lying over the years, which was often on Trump's behalf, gave the jury ample reason to acquit the country's 45th president.
Steinglass, in a nearly five-hour closing argument, acknowledged Cohen's shortcomings but contended they were a "sideshow," saying that Trump engaged in a conspiracy "to corrupt the 2016 election."
The prosecutor argued that an August 2015 deal cut by Trump and Cohen with David Pecker, then the publisher of the grocery store tabloid National Enquirer, to buy and bury unflattering stories about Trump and write negative and embellished ones about his political foes amounted to a "subversion of democracy" and led to the hush money payment to Daniels.
The jurors reached their verdict after hearing key testimony from the August 2015 meeting - characterized by prosecutors as the "Trump Tower conspiracy" - reread to them at their request on Thursday morning before resuming their deliberations.
Steinglass said the newspaper was effectively a "covert arm" of the 2016 Trump campaign because it paid $30,000 to a doorman at a Trump building in New York to hide his ultimately false claim that Trump had fathered an illegitimate child, and $150,000 to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who claimed she had a monthslong affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007.
Trump denied McDougal's claim as well, although Pecker testified that Trump inquired about her well-being as they walked the White House grounds in 2017 after he became president.
As for Daniels' claim of an encounter with Trump, Steinglass told the jurors, "You may say, 'Who cares if Mr. Trump slept with a porn star 10 years before the 2016 election?' Many people feel that way. It's harder to say the American people don't have the right to decide for themselves whether they care or not."
Blanche had told the jurors, "President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes, and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof - period."
He said the jury hearing the case should render "a very quick and easy not guilty verdict."
But Steinglass told the jury "to remember to tune out the noise and to ignore the sideshows. And if you've done that ... you will see the people have presented powerful evidence of the defendant's guilt."
"The law is the law, and it applies to everyone equally," Steinglass said. "There is no special standard for this defendant."