Those words, uttered 34 times in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday afternoon, changed American history.
“Guilty.”
That was the verdict of a 12-judge New York jury that found former President Donald Trump guilty of all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to commit or cover up another crime. The criminal case revolved around allegations that Trump tried to hide $130,000 in hush money paid to a porn star to avoid hurting his prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump is the first former US president to be convicted of a crime and the first major party presidential candidate to be convicted of a felony. Experts told USA Today that the case is a victory for the rule of law for now, regardless of whether it will affect the outcome of the next election.
This isn’t the first time Trump has made history: He was the first president with no government or military experience, the first to refuse the peaceful transfer of power, and the first president to be impeached twice. This latest first will forever be etched in his memory.
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Political scientists and historians were divided on whether the ruling would have any measurable impact on the 2024 presidential election, but they agreed on one immutable fact: the ruling will rewrite the history books.
What was the biggest takeaway?
“In a nation ruled by laws, not by people, no one is above the law,” says Jennifer Mercieca, a professor at Texas A&M University, “not even the president.”
There’s no moment like this
Other former US presidents have been embroiled in high-profile legal issues, lawsuits and congressional investigations stemming from political scandals. Trump’s New York hush-money case has been compared to the Watergate scandal that ended President Richard Nixon’s term and the 1998 impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton during his second term.
But Susan Leavell, a political science professor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, said those cases are not comparable to Trump’s 34 felony convictions because Nixon and Clinton were not convicted. Leavell also said she was “deeply skeptical” of anyone who claims to know how the New York ruling will affect American politics based on past precedent.
“A president of the United States has never been convicted in a criminal trial,” Lieber said. “It’s historically unprecedented.”
Unlike Trump, Nixon was never put on trial — he was preemptively pardoned by his successor, President Gerald Ford, before he was criminally charged for his role in the break-in at the Democratic National Committee and the subsequent cover-up. Nixon resigned in 1974, two years into his second term, amid growing impeachment pressure in Congress, and a Republican president never ran for public office again.
Trump, meanwhile, served just one term in the White House and is currently the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and has said he has no plans to give up on running for president after Thursday’s verdict. Trump was defiant and unrepentant throughout his trial, saying he “did nothing wrong.”
Jeffrey Engel, director of the Project on Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, said Nixon “is not the archetype historians turn to as an example of high-minded presidential behavior,” but argued that the former president “knew that the job and the country were bigger than himself.”
“So far, that’s not the case with Donald Trump,” Engel said.
Engel and Shannon O’Brien, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and self-described “presidential nerd,” also pushed back against comparisons to Clinton’s 1998 impeachment by the House of Representatives for lying to investigators and obstruction of justice over his sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.
While both Trump and Clinton’s cases “involved sexual issues”, O’Brien said “that’s where the similarities end”.
The Senate acquitted Clinton after the House impeachment, and the Justice Department did not pursue federal criminal charges against the Democrat, due to a policy dating back to Nixon’s presidency that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted for crimes while in office. Clinton also reached a settlement with the Justice Department on her final full day in the White House to avoid post-presidential prosecution on related matters in exchange for paying a fine, a five-year suspension from practicing law, and a public admission of unprofessional conduct.
By contrast, Trump was found guilty of 34 state charges by a 12-person jury on Thursday. He also faces criminal charges in three other jurisdictions — two federal and one Georgia — related to his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, and his alleged possession of classified materials after leaving the White House and obstruction of an investigation into that matter. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Clinton’s elected career ended with two terms in the White House, but Engel suggested the Democratic president’s scandals marred then-Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 White House campaign, which he narrowly lost to George W. Bush.
“If Trump loses, the lesson of Clinton, and every president since, is that there are places voters won’t go to support a candidate,” Engel said. “Right now, that line is a felony conviction. That line may change by November.”
A constitutional victory
Historians have described the verdict in Trump’s case as a victory for some of America’s most celebrated legal principles, including the phrase “equal justice under law” inscribed at the top of the U.S. Supreme Court building.
Engel argued that “the men who wrote the Constitution would be pleased that the political system they designed did not collapse.” Rather, as intended, he argued, the former commander in chief received the same treatment as any other American citizen in the justice system.
A New York grand jury found last year there was enough evidence to indict Trump on the hush money payments, and after hearing that evidence over the past six weeks in a Manhattan courtroom, a jury of 12 of Trump’s peers found the former president guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
“He was convicted not by President Biden or his political opponents, but swiftly and unanimously by a jury of 12 ordinary Americans,” said Alan Lichtman, a history professor at American University.
But Engel and Lichtman expressed concern that Trump’s reaction to the ruling could undermine confidence in the U.S. institutions that allowed a former president to try the president.
“They will say that people in New York are too biased to be fair, that the jury was persuaded by a reckless prosecutor and a crazy judge, that the whole trial was political,” Engel said of Trump and his allies.
Indeed, minutes after the jury read out the verdict, Trump called the New York verdict a “disgrace” and vowed to fight the felony conviction. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana similarly characterized the case as Democrats “weaponizing the justice system” to block Trump’s reelection as president.
O’Brien argued that Trump and his allies were making baseless claims about bias in the New York court because acknowledging their legitimacy would damage their political prospects.
“He has no respect for a system that holds him accountable,” O’Brien said. “He has no other choice, so he must destroy it.”
An uncertain future
Shortly after the trial concluded on Thursday, Trump insisted that the “real verdict” on his innocence would be handed down on Election Day.
The latest RealClearPolitics national polling average shows President Trump and President Joe Biden in a close race, with President Trump holding a slight lead.
Experts who spoke to USA Today said they were divided on how Trump’s felony conviction will affect his chances of winning. They noted that the Trump campaign is expected to use the ruling to galvanize support and fundraising among its base. But how it will affect swing votes is less clear.
“It’s unclear how voters will respond,” Lieber said. “The question is how it will affect independents and Republicans who support conservative policies but have concerns about corruption and integrity.”
She noted that an April Ipsos poll found that about 40% of Republicans and two-thirds of independents considered the hush-money allegations serious. Among those who said they would vote for Trump if the election were held at that time, 13% said they would not vote for him if a jury convicted him of a felony. And another 25% said they would not support him if he was serving time in prison at the time of the election.
Given the close margin of the presidential election, Lichtman suggested that even a slight shift among moderate voters away from Trump could be enough to thwart a possible Republican victory.
Richman has accurately predicted the winner of most presidential elections since 1984, except for the 2000 election. He hasn’t made a final prediction this year, but said “a lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose reelection.”
