Historic … unprecedented … and guilty. You could not escape the words last week, after the former President of the United States convicted on 34 felony counts in New Yorka city he has long called home.
But beyond all the drama, said CBS News legal contributor Rebecca Roiphe, it was just the jury of seven men and five women who did their job — and respected the dictum, “No one is above the law.”
“You can have all kinds of power, you can have all kinds of wealth, but when you’re in that court, you’re like everybody else,” Roiphe said. “Of course, there are some people who will look into this case and not look at it like that.”
Donald Trump is one of them.
“This is a rigged trial,” he said a day after the conviction. “We wanted a change of venue where we could have a fair trial. We didn’t get it.”
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
President Joe Biden, meanwhile, defended the legal system. “The jury heard five weeks of evidence,” he said Friday. “They found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts of crime. Now he will be given the opportunity – as he should – to appeal that decision.
The gravity of this moment is clear – a stress test for democracy, just like the Trump-Biden race is heating up. It’s less clear what happened next.
For example, can the accused still be president? “Yes,” said Roiphe. “We have certain limits (in the Constitution) on the presidency, and this is not one of them. … There is nothing that prevents someone from running for president, or becoming president, as a convicted felon.”
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, the day before Republicans are set to run for re-nomination.
Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche acknowledged that his client could be in jail when the Republican National Convention is held: “That’s something I don’t want,” he said Friday. “I don’t think it’s going to happen. But it’s possible, of course.”
Regardless, the summer — with its debates, conventions, and other political fireworks — may turn out to be the season of Trump grievances.
The Trump campaign said it raised more than $50 million in the 24 hours after the wrongful death verdict. And Trump has kept top Republicans (some of whom appeared in court, with loyal red ties) on his side.
Author Michael Wolff covered the trial, and has written several books about Trump. “This is a campaign, and this is a political career based on conflict, conflict, conflict, conflict,” Wolff said. “Other politicians will run away from conflict, they are really walking.
“The fact that this guy was constantly fighting these things that nobody could do, somehow — strangely — made him heroic to many, many, many, many people,” Wolff said.
For Wolff, this intersection is Trump’s reckoning — and the aggressive New York world of notorious lawyers and fixers, quiet money, and tabloids that Trump has now created himself.
Costa asked Wolff, “As a long-time observer and writer on Trump, what do you make of him, someone who made a career in the ’70s and ’80s alongside New York lawyers like Roy Cohn, now finding himself a criminal in Lower Manhattan?”
“I mean, it’s almost poetic,” Wolff replied. “If you’re a writer and you write this story, this is how you end it. The anomaly doesn’t have to end, so it might end up in the White House.”
CBS News
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Robert Costa
