Though closed his eyes in court, but Trump could not sweep the guilty verdict away

For six weeks Donald Trump closed his eyes, but in the end he couldn’t make it go away.

 

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty, the foreman said. Guilty 34 times. Guilty on every count. Guilty of falsifying business records to cover up an affair. Guilty of cheating election rules. Guilty, and still he isn’t going away. Guilty, and you have to wonder sometimes if he ever will.

 

For neither the first nor the last time, Donald J. Trump, the 45th president of the United States, made history of the ugly kind Thursday. He became the first former president ever convicted of a crime in the United States and the first major party candidate ever convicted during a presidential campaign.

 

Within minutes he was already raising money off the defeat. “I was just convicted in a RIGGED political Witch Hunt trial,” his email to supporters read at 5:42 p.m. Thursday. “I DID NOTHING WRONG!”

 

But that’s not what the jury said. Their verdict, when it came, seemed to take the entire court by surprise. Judge Juan Merchan had already told the parties he was ready to let the jurors go for the day when the note came in. “No verdict today,” Molly Crane-Newman of the New York Daily News tweeted at 4:14 p.m.

“Update,” Maggie Haberman of the New York Times wrote 23 minutes later. “The jury says they have a verdict.”

 

It began to feel for a moment, watching from the outside, like the line between theatre and the real, already and always fuzzy in the world of Donald Trump, had finally been breached.

 

It was shortly before 5 p.m. Merchan had just walked out of his windowless 15th floor courtroom when he walked back in again. The foreman had slipped him a note. After less than two full days of deliberations, the jury had decided. They just needed a few minutes to fill out their forms.

 

When Merchan spoke, there were audible gasps in the courtroom, according to pool reporters who were watching from the inside. There will be no outbursts, Merchan warned. And then the jury came back in.

 

Donald Trump has been in the public eye for almost 50 years, always speaking, always spewing, always moving on to another lie. But for the past six weeks in Merchan’s court, he has been silent. He didn’t testify in his own defence. He didn’t yell out or mutter loudly, as he sometimes did in his civil defamation trials. Instead he sat, eyes often closed, and either listened or slept, depending on the day (and depending on whose account you believed.)

 

But on Thursday, Trump’s eyes were open. Not wide exactly. He is an inveterate squinter. Even when he’s outraged his brows hang heavy, his pupils never pop; he always looks as if he is peering out from deep inside a cave.

 

But he was definitely watching Thursday, when the foreman read the charges one by one. Count one, falsifying business records — first degree. “Guilty.” Count two, falsifying business records — first degree. “Guilty.” And on it went. Thirty-four identical charges. Thirty-four identical guilty verdicts.

 

Throughout the recitation, Trump sat stone-faced, according to pool reporters. When he stood up to leave, he shook hands with his son Eric, who was sitting behind him, then walked out without saying a word.

 

That changed when he reached the cameras outside the courtroom. He shuffled toward them, looked down, then planted one foot loudly on the floor. “This is a disgrace,” he said. “This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge.”

At first, his heart didn’t seem in it. He was almost mumbling, repeating himself — “disgraced” “rigged.” But after a minute, he caught something of his old swagger, that strange honking lilt, always almost joking, always a little bemused. “This is long from over,” he said, wagging his finger, and then he turned and walked away.

 

On that at least, Trump can be believed. This isn’t over. There is a sentencing hearing to come, on July 11, just four days before the Republican National Convention is to begin in Milwaukee. He will also, most certainly, appeal.

 

And then, of course, there is the campaign. Trump is a convict now. He is a criminal. But he remains ahead in most swing state polls. It might have seemed impossible once that America would elect a man facing prison to the White House. But if nothing else, Donald Trump has forever changed our perceptions of what possible in politics really means.

 

 

 

 

This article was first reported by Then Star