. Donald Trump became the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes Thursday as a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to a porn actor who said the two had sex. Jurors convicted Trump on all 34 counts after deliberating for 9.
5 hours. Trump is the first president to be indicted and convicted on criminal charges after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office charged him with 34 counts of falsifying business records, alleging he hid salacious information from voters to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election. The former president pleaded not guilty and denied all wrongdoing.
Sentencing is scheduled for July 11. The verdict caps a yearslong legal saga that began not too long after Trump declared presidential run in 2015. In August 2015, National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified that he met with Donald Trump and Michael Cohen in Trump Tower to discuss how his “magazines could do to help the campaign.
” Pecker told jurors that he agreed to serve as the “eyes and ears” of Trump’s presidential campaign by identifying negative stories about Trump related to women. “The entire purpose of this meeting at Trump Tower was..
.to manipulate and defraud the voters, to pull the wool over their eyes in a coordinated fashion,” Manhattan prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told jurors during his closing statement about the alleged scheme. To ho.
