Former President Donald Trump found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in hush money trial

Donald Trump became the first former American president convicted of criminal charges Thursday when a Manhattan jury found him guilty of fixing business records to conceal a sexual encounter with an adult film actress from the voting public ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

The jury found Trump, the 45th president of the United States, guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in what prosecutors described as a scheme to subvert the will of the American people.

After about 12 hours of deliberations, the jury foreman announced the verdict to a packed courtroom that included Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg and Trump’s middle son, Eric Trump, at around 5 p.m. in Manhattan Criminal Court.

“Guilty,” the jury foreman repeated 34 times, in response to each count charged.

Trump, seated at the defense table amid his army of lawyers, had no discernible reaction.

“This was a disgrace,” Trump said to reporters outside the courtroom shortly after the verdict was rendered, adding that he is innocent. “This was a rigged trial.”

Trump, 77, of Palm Beach, Florida, now both a felon and the Republican Party's presumptive nominee for president in November, faces up to 4 years in prison at sentencing. Trump, the first ex-president or president to go on trial on criminal charges, is expected to appeal.

His lawyers left the downtown Manhattan courthouse without commenting.

Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchan set sentencing for July 11 — just days before Trump is expected to officially become the Republican Party’s presidential candidate at the GOP’s national convention in Milwaukee.

After the historic verdict was rendered, Merchan thanked the jury for its service, noting jurors spent weeks away from their jobs and other responsibilities.

“You engaged in a very stressful and difficult task,” Merchan told the jurors, whose identities have been kept secret from the public.

Bragg, speaking at a news conference Thursday evening, praised the jury. The “12 everyday New Yorkers” convicted the former president “by following the facts and the law and doing so without fear or favor,” said Bragg, who declined to say what sentence his office would seek for Trump.

“I did my job,” said Bragg, who faced verbal attacks from Trump and his supporters. “Our job is to follow the facts in the law …  and that's exactly what we did here, and I feel enormous gratitude to work alongside phenomenal public servants that do that each and every day.”

Bragg added: “The only voice that matters is the voice of the jury.”

The prosecution’s star witness — Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, Lawrence native Michael Cohen, who took jurors inside what prosecutors said was a conspiracy to silence negative stories about Trump to better his chances at becoming president — spoke out on social media following the conviction.

“Today is an important day for accountability and the rule of law,” Cohen wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “While it has been a difficult journey for me and my family, the truth always matters.”

The verdict followed a seven-week-long trial during which the jury heard from 22 witnesses, a mix of Trump loyalists and enemies who told a tawdry tale of sex and tabloid deception in what prosecutors said was a conspiracy that reached the White House.

Trump, on a daily basis throughout the trial, railed against the prosecution and judge in social media posts and in comments to journalists, calling the case against him a “witch hunt” and the trial “rigged.” He chronically complained that the courtroom was freezing and that President Joe Biden, his expected opponent in the November election, was behind the prosecution that was unfairly keeping him in the courthouse and away from the campaign trail.

The trial itself became a required stop for Trump loyalists in the GOP, with scores of Republican members of Congress and other elected officials in attendance. Three of Trump's four children made appearances at the trial, but his wife, former first lady Melania Trump, was notably absent.

In another historic first, Trump was the first president to be held in criminal contempt of court when Merchan found he violated the gag order in the case, which prohibited Trump from publicly criticizing the jury and court staff.

Trump, who had vowed to testify, did not take the witness stand. The defense called two witnesses, including Nassau County-based lawyer Robert Costello, who epically clashed with Merchan before the judge cleared the courtroom to admonish him and threatened to kick him off the witness stand.

Manhattan prosecutors had argued that Trump, some two months after he announced his candidacy for president in June 2015 after descending a golden escalator inside his eponymous building on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, hatched a “criminal conspiracy” to win the election.

The “catch and kill” scheme dictated that Trump associate David Pecker, then the publisher of American Media Inc., the parent company of the supermarket tabloid The National Enquirer, would be the “eyes and ears” for any negative stories about Trump that anyone attempted to shop around to the tabloid press.

Pecker, in direct testimony, told the jury the plan was that he would alert Cohen and they would work to quash it.

That meeting was apparently key to Trump’s conviction, as the jury requested a readback of both Cohen and Pecker’s testimony about that very meeting on its first day of deliberations on Wednesday.

And according to trial testimony, the trio executed the “catch and kill” plan three times, paying adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000; $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who alleged to have had an affair with Trump; and $30,000 to Dino Sajudin, a door attendant at Trump Tower who had shopped a false story that Trump fathered a child outside his marriage.

Manhattan prosecutor Joshua Steinglass, speaking to the jury during a nearly five-hour summation, likened the nondisclosure agreement signed by Daniels to an illegal campaign donation.

“The purpose of this meeting was to fool the voters, to pull the wool over their eyes in a coordinated fashion,” Steinglass said. “NDAs are indeed illegal when they serve an illegal purpose, like unreported campaign contributions.”

But Trump's lead defense attorney, Todd Blanche, argued that the notion that Trump, Cohen and Pecker cooked up a conspiracy to impact the presidential election during that meeting didn't align with trial testimony, which included Pecker testifying that The National Enquirer's parent company long had been in the practice of buying and burying stories for celebrities.

“This is the same thing that AMI had been doing for decades,” Blanche told the jury during his nearly three-hour summation. “They had been doing it for President Trump since the '90s. They purchase stories all the time. They did it with Mark Wahlberg, Tiger Woods. … Many politicians work with the media to try to promote their image. It’s how you try to win elections.”

Blanche echoed what he emphasized in his opening statement — impacting an election is part of the democratic process. “This is a campaign,” Blanche told the jury. “This is not a crime. Nothing criminal about it. It’s done all the time.”

The payment to Daniels was initially made by Cohen, who was later reimbursed by Trump, according to Cohen and a series of checks signed by Trump in his distinctive black Sharpie signature, which prosecutors entered into evidence.

The reimbursement to Cohen for the Daniels payment and how they were recorded in the business records of The Trump Organization, the ex-president's Manhattan-based real estate company, were at the heart of the criminal charges. Trump was not charged in connection with the payments to McDougal and Sajudin, but the judge permitted prosecutors to present evidence of those payments to the jury.

Prosecutors alleged Trump falsified business records 34 times — in the form of invoices, ledgers and checks — in recording the payments to Cohen, which Trump's defense argued were payments for Cohen's work as Trump's personal attorney. Eleven of the counts related to what prosecutors said were phony invoices Cohen submitted for legal work, 11 counts related to checks written by Trump using his funds to reimburse Cohen for paying Daniels, and 12 counts related to ledger entries — accounting records made for reimbursements in Trump's books.

The charges of falsifying business records are misdemeanors, but were upgraded to Class E felonies by prosecutors, who argued the crimes were committed to cover up the crime of conspiracy to promote an election by unlawful means.

Prosecutors have said the payment was illegally recorded in Trump Organization records as legal services as part of a retainer agreement, but neither the retainer nor the legal services existed.

Trump was not required to have made the false entry himself, but to have “made and caused a false entry” with “the intent to defraud to commit another crime,” according to legal instructions the judge gave to the jury before deliberations began.

The whole saga that put Trump on trial in a historic first is alleged to have begun with a man cheating on his wife.

Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, testified in frank terms about her encounter with Trump in a hotel suite in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, in 2006.

She first met Trump, then a reality TV personality, hours earlier at a celebrity golf tournament, she testified. The pair took a smiling photo, which was presented as evidence for the jury.

Trump's then-bodyguard, Keith Schiller, who would go on to work at the White House in the Trump administration, asked if she'd meet Trump for dinner later that night, Daniels testified. She agreed.

When she arrived at his suite, Trump was clad in silk pajamas, Daniels testified. She joked about his attire and he changed, she said.

They chatted for hours about her career, reality TV and even his family. Trump told Daniels not to worry about his wife, who had just months earlier given birth to their son, Barron, saying the pair slept in separate beds, Daniels testified.

Trump and Daniels never ate dinner. But when she emerged from the bathroom, where she had combed through his toiletry bag and found discount brands Old Spice and PertPlus shampoo, Trump was beckoning her to his bed, Daniels testified.

They had brief, missionary-style sex, Daniels said, adding that Trump did not wear a condom — the kind of intimate details that Trump, or any defendant, could find uncomfortable listening to in a packed courtroom, much less being broadcast for all the world to hear.

Trump and his lawyers denied he had sex with Daniels and pointed to a previously written statement she made denying the illicit liaison.

Daniels, who was among the first prosecution witnesses to take the stand, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The hush money payment to Daniels was made in the homestretch of the 2016 election following the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” video, which featured Trump bragging about grabbing women by their genitals.

Former campaign and White House aide Hope Hicks, a somewhat reluctant prosecution witness, testified that the release of the recording by The Washington Post was a disaster for the Trump campaign.

Prosecutors alleged the recording's release pressed the famously cheap Trump to sign off on the payment to Daniels in a desperate attempt to salvage his campaign.

But Blanche painted his client as a victim of extortion by Daniels and her lawyer, Keith Davidson, who denied that assertion while testifying but said he had been investigated by federal authorities for alleged extortion and admitted brokering a series of payoffs to celebrity accusers.

Cohen, the disbarred attorney who has served prison time after pleading guilty to federal crimes, including lying to Congress, served as the prosecution's star witness — and the defense's villain.

Cohen was the only witness who testified that he discussed with Trump the hush money payment to Daniels, providing prosecutors with evidence that Trump acted with intent.

And prosecutors played a voice recording of Trump discussing the payment to McDougal with Cohen, in which Trump is heard saying to pay in “cash.” Prosecutors, perhaps in an attempt to buffer concerns about Cohen's credibility, called a series of witnesses before Cohen in an attempt to pre-corroborate much of his testimony.

“It’s patently obvious that the defense wants to make this case about Michael Cohen — it’s not,” Steinglass told the jury during his closing arguments. “This case is not about Michael Cohen; this case is about Donald Trump.”

Blanche attempted to catch Cohen in lies, aggressively questioning Cohen about a 1-minute, 36-second phone conversation he had with Trump in which Cohen said he discussed Daniels' finalized nondisclosure agreement with Trump.

Blanche posited that Trump and Cohen had only discussed a 14-year-old who had been prank-calling Cohen, based on text messages between Cohen and Schiller shortly before Cohen called Schiller's phone and he passed it to Trump. But Cohen asserted they had discussed both issues.

During his closing arguments, Blanche accused Cohen of perjuring himself about that call and derided Cohen as “like the MVP of liars” and the “GLOAT, greatest liar of all times.”

Steinglass urged the jury to concentrate on the documents at the heart of the case. “Michael Cohen provides context and color,” Steinglass said in his summation. “He’s like a tour guide through the physical evidence. These documents don’t lie. These documents tell you everything you need to know. You don’t need Michael Cohen to connect these dots.”

Steinglass walked the jury back through the financial documents entered into evidence, displaying on an overhead projector trial exhibits, including a bank record on which former Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg wrote by hand a breakdown of the $420,000 to be paid to Cohen. Steinglass described the notes written by Weisselberg and another Trump executive as “smoking guns” that corroborate what Cohen testified.

“They blow out of the water the defense claim that the payments in 2017 were for services rendered,” said Steinglass, referring to the defense contention that Trump paid Cohen during that period to be his personal attorney. “They have to stare at these pieces of paper and tell you with a straight face these are not reimbursements.”

Trump's payments to Cohen — $35,000 monthly — were not repayments for the hush money, Blanche argued, but were simply what the documents stated — legal services. Cohen was still acting as Trump's personal attorney at the time, Blanche argued, and it's preposterous to believe that Cohen would have worked for free, despite Cohen's testimony that he was making money from various entities at the time by trading on his connection to Trump, then the newly minted president.

Trump was in the White House during this period and far removed from the running of his company, Blanche argued.

“President Trump was busy running the country,” Blanche said.

With this trial behind him, Trump now faces prosecutions of 88 criminal charges in three other jurisdictions. The charges include allegations that he attempted to overturn his loss in the 2020 election, incited a riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and improperly stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. None are expected to happen before the election.