Trump is a Felon, Now What?
A first in American history; a former President found guilty of a felony. Does it even matter though?
On the afternoon of Thursday May 30th, the jury of twelve hearing Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan ruled him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records. This is the first time in American history a president has been convicted of a felony, a pretty embarrassing ‘first’ to be associated with. The former president’s legal clashes have been the subject of a few viral moments, notably his mugshot taken in Atlanta. With all this attention and media hype, why does this moment in particular matter though?
To lay down the facts, it first means that he is officially a convicted felon and will be sentenced by judge Juan Marchan on July 11th, the standard six-week period. The sentence is probably going to be probation or a fine but the maximum sentence is four years in prison. Due to his gag order violations, the judge may decide some amount of prison time is appropriate. Trump’s lawyers are certainly going to issue a notice of appeal and will have 30 days to do so. His lawyers will have a time period to prepare and file the appeal which is four or six months depending on the conviction. During this whole period he will be released on bail as the case goes through the New York State appellate courts. This process would almost certainly take many more months, so the odds of him sitting in a prison cell before the November election is near zero. Assuming these attempts fail he could appeal to the Supreme Court. Although his case is very weak, it would only take four of the nine judges to agree to take the case. There is a non-zero chance that the 6-3 conservative court, where three of those justices were appointed by Trump, would subvert basic criminal law and let him off the hook.
Trump is still eligible to be president. If elected, Trump cannot pardon himself since this is a state conviction and probably won’t serve jail time until after his term due to it interfering with presidential duties. It is also entirely possible as president he would abuse the executive office, doing everything in his power to erase this conviction. In an interview after the trial he threatened to go after his political opponents and combined with his dictatorial Project 2025 agenda, it seems almost guaranteed he will annihilate all democratic checks and balances in his way.
Without diving into a total psychoanalysis, something I typically find useless in politics, Trump had an undoubted self-obsessed confidence before the last election. He was surrounded by yes-men, huge crowds at his rallies and faced little opposition. Then, the election defeat, the defeat at the capitol riots and these trials have completely shattered any justification for that immense confidence, where now you see him indignantly whining about ‘rigged’ this, ‘rigged’ that. If you thought the disgusting and ill-minded policy was bad in his last term, imagine what a revenge-driven Trump will be like.
So, is there any merit to the idea that this is all a sham? No, the crime of falsifying business records has been tried over 9,800 times in the past decade in New York, it’s a fairly simple and common charge. And is Joe Biden responsible for this trial? No, Joe Biden has no connection at all to the prosecution or the judge. And why does this matter so much? Polling has stayed fairly the same, the New York Times reported a very slight gain for Biden, but this is only when comparing the two candidates as third parties will have a few percentage effect and it still doesn’t tell us how the electoral college will shake out. Okay, so surely the media’s headline ‘GUILTY’ in big black ink has to mean something. Every liberal news platform in the country has been more or less celebrating this historical moment. Ironically, it should really be a sigh of relief if anything. A man who has destroyed the federal judiciary for decades to come, irreversibly fed power to the rich and ordered a coup attempt on our government finally being convicted of a petty white collar crime is hardly an enthusiastic victory. The idea that people would be mass emigrating away from MAGA now that he is a felon is absurd logically. This is the same person that was impeached twice, if those voters didn’t change their minds then, why would they now? This liberal media hamster wheel shows no signs of slowing down and they remain deaf to all of the legitimately disgusting moves Biden has made. Is it to protect democrats from knowing enough to want to stay home in November? Maybe, but what about the man himself…
Biden has been handed the greatest political alley-oop in our lifetimes. His opponent is a now convicted felon and the day after he decides to issue an executive order limiting immigrants and asylum seekers, a move straight from Trump’s playbook. This was a central criticism of Trump during the election cycle and a promise Biden initially made good on. The reason why Biden thinks he can win over religious Trump supporters, we will never know. Biden has been stuck in the 20th century for a long time and he is playing the role of the sensible moderate by mitigating as much conflict as possible. Rather than risking being seen as a polarizing but strong leader he cowers, giving into the reactionary right wing and allowing Netenyahu to walk all over him crossing red line after red line. Just this week Israel carried out an airstrike on a school murdering tens of women and children. This is after the multi-million dollar US funded port off the coast of Gaza failed and sank resulting in delays getting the promised aid into civilian hands. This stubborn support of Israel has put Biden in a diplomatic nightmare. After passing a bill that sent billions of dollars to Israel, prime minister Netenyahu has escalated the war past Biden’s ‘red line’ and has ignored all ceasefire deals. National security advisor John Kirby was caught with his pants down multiple times saying that they “haven’t found any incidents where the Israelis have violated international law” despite the International Criminal Court(ICC) issuing arrest warrants for Israel’s war crimes just days prior. These are the urgent and history altering events which desperately need the attention of the media. So if Joe Biden doesn’t have the courage to stand up to fascist Netenyahu, how will he ever get on a stage and stand up to Trump?
The greatest tragedy of this moment in history is watching this slow motion train wreck. Biden has lost all control of the Israel situation which, at this point, may not stop until every Palestinian is dead or in a concentration camp. He has alienated a large portion of young people hoping for long overdue student loan forgiveness. He has entirely alienated the left in this country who at least had their fingers crossed for his few mild progressive policies. This extends to those watching the disgusting use of police violence on college campuses that he endorsed; a material realization of his past blunders on the BLM protest issue where he called for more funding to an already over-militarized police force. So when liberals and moderate democrats stand there shell-shocked, both hands on their head, mouth agape with bewilderment that twice-impeached-felon Donald Trump won… understand that this was a preventable disaster, years in the making.
Then prosecute Hillary as she committed the same infraction among many many other blatantly illegal acts
It was a witch hunt in a liberal city with an all liberal jury and a liberal judge, and the jury was told how it was to turn out a few days before the verdict was even out, all hid by a liberal media. The man will not get a fair shake anywhere. They know they can’t beat him so they are doing anything they can to discredit him