Donald Trump said on Thursday: “If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone” at a press conference called the morning after his historic criminal conviction in New York by a jury of his peers.
Trump criticized all aspects of the process in a speech peppered with falsehoods and conspiracy theories that threatened bad things to come, while also pivoting to well-worn topics such as immigration.
“This is a case where, if they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” the former president said, before changing the subject to immigration:
“These are bad people. These are, in many cases, I believe, sick people. When you look at our country, what’s happening, where millions and millions of people are flowing in from all parts of the world, not just South America, from Africa, from Asia, from the Middle East, and they’re coming in from jails and prisons, and they’re coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums.”
Trump’s legal team embarked on a counter-offensive almost immediately after Trump became the first ex-US president and presidential candidate to become a convicted felon.
With the 2024 presidential election campaign propelled deep into uncharted territory, Todd Blanche, Trump’s attorney, went on national television to make a spirited though measured defense of his client, vowing to lodge an appeal against Thursday’s judgment.
The jury in a Manhattan courtroom found Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying documents related to hush money paid to an adult film actor, Stormy Daniels, shortly before the 2016 presidential poll.
Appearing on NBC, Blanche insisted Trump’s defense had not been given “a fair shake” during the trial but predicted that they would be vindicated on appeal.
“We’re going to appeal and we’re going to win on appeal,” Blanche told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. “That’s the goal. The goal is … to appeal quickly and hopefully be vindicated quickly.”
He said the legal team had been unsurprised by the guilty verdict, adding: “We didn’t think we were going to get a fair shake in Manhattan. There’s a lot of evidence that should have gotten in that didn’t come in.”
Trump now faces the prospect of rewriting the record books further if he gets sent to jail when the judge, Juan Merchan, holds a sentencing hearing on 11 July, four days before the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, where Trump is scheduled to be officially anointed as the party’s presidential nominee.
Some analysts predict that the prospect of a custodial sentence has risen because of Trump’s repeated breaking of gag orders during the six-week trial and his condemnation of Merchant as “corrupt and conflicted” after Thursday’s verdict.
But Blanche played down that possibility, pointing to Trump’s advanced age and his previous lack of a criminal record.
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“Under the guidelines and the rules of the court … President Trump would not face a day in prison,” he said. “Putting aside the fact he was president of the United States, the conduct that we’re talking about, he is 78, 79 years old [Trump is 77]. He’s a grandfather, a husband, a father. He should not go to prison.”
The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who led the case against Trump and was also attacked by the former president, has yet to announce if he will request a prison sentence.
With Republicans reacting to the verdict in unison with fury, speculation was rife about how the fallout might affect the presidential contest between Trump and Joe Biden, with polls showing a close race which the GOP presumptive nominee narrowly leads in several key battleground states.
Writing in Politico, John Harris predicted that the newly minted image of Trump as a convicted felon among a segment of swing voters could give Biden a vital edge come November.
“Trump’s only path to victory is a coalition that includes many Republicans and independents who find him deplorable but think a second Biden term would be even more so,” he wrote. “That is why – even as the full consequences likely will emerge slowly – this week was easily the worst so far this year for Trump and the best for Biden … It does mean that many voters who don’t much like Biden received an emphatic, unambiguous reminder of why they don’t like Trump.”
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