The criminal justice system finally caught up to Donald Trump.
He has spent decades on the edge of legal trouble. First, he was a New York businessman whose company violated discrimination laws, failed to repay debts and flirted with bankruptcy. Then, he was a president who impeded an investigation of his 2016 campaign, tried to overturn the result of his re-election defeat and refused to return classified documents he took from the White House.
Throughout, his central strategy was the same: delay. Try to push off legal problems for as long as possible and hope that a solution somehow presented itself. It usually worked, too. And it seemed to be on the verge of working again this year, with two federal trials and one state trial in Georgia all unlikely to finish before Election Day.
Yesterday, however, a criminal jury judged Trump for the first time. The verdict was guilty, 34 times, pronounced late in the afternoon in downtown Manhattan. The prosecutors argued that Trump had falsified business records to hide a sexual affair from voters and corrupt the 2016 election. After two days of deliberation, the 12 jurors agreed. Trump has become the first former president of the United States to be a convicted felon.
Yes, the caveats are important. He will appeal, and some legal experts think he has a case, given the novel combination of accusations that the prosecutors made. It is unclear when, or even if, he will go to prison. Most important, nobody knows whether it will help or hurt his presidential campaign.
On the most basic level, however, Trump experienced a personal defeat yesterday unlike any other.
My colleague Michael Gold, who has been covering Trump, said that as he left the courthouse — after making a combative statement but taking no questions — Trump “looked more somber than I have seen him at any point in the last several months.”
Maggie Haberman, who has been covering Trump for years, notes that Trump and his aides frequently respond to bad news with spin about what actually happened. “By following this playbook, Trump’s team can usually create enough confusion to leave people questioning outcomes,” Maggie wrote. “Not so with a jury verdict.”