Newly convicted felon Donald Trump was set to address journalists Friday in his first public act since a stunning guilty verdict in a New York criminal court threw the 2024 presidential campaign into uncharted territory.
Trump announced the event at his signature Trump Tower property in Manhattan for 11:00 am (1500 GMT) as a press conference. However, the Republican often uses similar events to make lengthy statements, before refusing to take questions.
On Thursday, a jury found him guilty on all 34 charges of falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment meant to silence porn star Stormy Daniels from publicizing an alleged sexual encounter that he feared would be fatal to his 2016 presidential campaign.
Prosecutors successfully laid out a case alleging the hush money and the illegal covering up of the payment was part of a broader crime to prevent voters from knowing about Trump’s behavior just as he was about to face Hillary Clinton.
Trump, who called the trial “rigged,” faces a potential sentence of four years in prison but is much more likely to receive probation.
Although the legal earthquake does not prevent Trump from continuing his battle to unseat President Joe Biden and return to the White House, it does cast the already tense contest into unpredictable waters.
Trump wasted no time in shifting from courtroom to campaign mode.
“I am a political prisoner!” he announced in an online campaign ad immediately after the guilty verdicts landed.
In addition to the New York case, he faces three far more serious criminal indictments over his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden and hoarding of top-secret documents at his home in Florida.
Those cases, however, are not likely to go to trial before the November election.
– Biden’s silence –
Biden has so far avoided making Trump’s multiple legal difficulties an issue. As president, he is keen to avoid giving ammunition to Republicans who claim he is meddling in the justice system.
Now he will have to decide whether Trump’s conviction changes the calculus.
Biden’s campaign quickly reacted to the verdicts by saying that “no one is above the law.” It added, however, that the focus should turn to the election, because “the threat Trump poses to our democracy has never been greater.”
Biden himself said nothing about the momentous events in New York.
On Friday, he has a busy public schedule, including talks with the Belgian prime minister and a celebration for NFL Super Bowl champions the Kansas City Chiefs, which will offer frequent opportunities for him to make remarks to journalists.
– Trump makes history –
Trump is now the first former US president ever convicted of a crime. He would be setting another, even more startling record if he wins on November 5.
Judge Juan Merchan set sentencing for July 11 — four days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump is due to receive the party’s formal nomination.
Robert F. Kennedy, who is running as an independent in the presidential race, predicted on X that the New York trial would “backfire.”
But Keith Gaddie, a political analyst and professor at Texas Christian University, said the political impact of the shocking events has yet to be determined.
“It probably doesn’t move a lot of votes, but in particular states with particular swing votes, it could matter around the margins,” he said.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has yet to comment, but her husband Barrett Blade told CNN the verdict vindicated her and lifted “a big weight off her shoulders.”
A spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, whose rule has seen dozens of political opponents, journalists and human rights campaigners murdered, claimed that the jury trial was a “de-facto elimination of political rivals.”
And in Italy, the far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, said Trump was the “victim of judicial harassment.”
bur-sms/
