Donald Trump has been destined to become the first president convicted of a felony since the day he came down the escalator at Trump Tower and announced he was running for president. The man had no respect for convention, for law or for the Constitution, and now he has been branded a criminal with the prospect of jail time for the 34 counts on which he was convicted.

Tonight is a moment to celebrate that even for Teflon Don, eventually our criminal justice system could gather itself and deliver consequences. But that celebration should be short.

Trump, speaking outside the courtroom, has already doubled down on his dishonest attacks on our justice system, alleging a presidential conspiracy to steer state officials over which Joe Biden has no authority into indicting an innocent Trump on politically motivated charges.

Already his minions are spreading the word that a Democratic prosecutor before a Democratic judge aided by a jury pulled from an overwhelmingly Democratic city can’t be trusted. Even Republicans who have resisted boarding the Trump train are rallying to the message because it is true.

Trump’s presidential donations site, built to capitalize on the rage of the right, is so flooded with money that it has shut down — unable to choke down the wads of cash true believers are sending the felonious former president’s way. A legion of right-leaning journalists — some ethical, some not — are desperately seeking to expose the jurors’ personal information so that the nation will know their political pasts and every sin in an effort to discredit the verdict.

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After a night of celebration, Biden should react with caution, not just because the forces unleashed by this conviction are unpredictable, but also because while he is the Democrats’ president, he is also the nation’s president. In this unprecedented moment, he should bring the nation together by being both modest and merciful.

Modest because it is reasonable for many in the rightward half of the American electorate to doubt the justice system of New York. There was another historic unanimous decision today, this one by the Supreme Court of the United States — which ruled that New York’s Democratic regulators must face a National Rifle Association lawsuit that they targeted the group in violation of its First Amendment rights. The decision rebuking New York was written by liberal lion Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Just as a unanimous jury said today that Donald Trump is corrupt, a 9-0 Supreme Court ruled that the Democrats of New York are not to be trusted.

The smart move for Biden is to ask the Democratic governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, to use her clemency power to pardon Trump.

First, because as much as Trump has trashed the norms of our Democratic system, we do not want to go down the road of the party of an incumbent president prosecuting his chief political opponent for paperwork infractions. Presidential campaigns produce a lot of paper, pushed by a lot of people. An ambitious prosecutor with a partisan lens can always find an indictable offense if not deliver a conviction in open court.

Second, because it most likely ends Trump’s ability to appeal the verdict against him. Courts will rule any appeal moot if Trump has been pardoned and does not face jail or fines for his crimes. Democrats should not be so confident that such a complicated case will withstand appellate scrutiny at both the state and the federal level. After a pardon, the stain of conviction will be permanent.

Third, because it strips Trump of the martyrdom mantle he could well ride into the White House. Moreover, it builds up Democrats and Biden as the adults who, when offered partisan advantage against a wounded opponent, chose to put the nation first.

Biden won in 2020 because an exhausted nation turned to him for a chance at peace. This is his opportunity to deliver.

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Donald Trump is convicted of a felony. Here's how that affects the 2024 presidential race

Having been convicted of 34 felonies, Donald Trump cannot own a gun, hold public office or even vote in many states.

But in 158 days, voters across America will decide whether he will return to the White House to serve another four years as the nation's president.

Trump's conviction in his New York hush money trial on Thursday is a stunning development in an already unorthodox presidential election with profound implications for the justice system and perhaps U.S. democracy itself.

But in a deeply divided America, it's unclear whether Trump's status as someone with a felony conviction will have any impact at all on the 2024 election. Trump remains in a competitive position against President Joe Biden this fall, even as the Republican former president now faces the prospect of a prison sentence in the run-up to the November election.

In the short term at least, there were immediate signs that the unanimous guilty verdict was helping to unify the Republican Party’s disparate factions as GOP officials in Congress and in state capitals across the country rallied behind their presumptive presidential nominee, while his campaign expected to benefit from a flood of new fundraising dollars.

Standing outside the courtroom, Trump described the verdict as the result of a “rigged, disgraceful trial.”

“The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people," Trump said, referring to Election Day. “This is long from over.”

The immediate reaction from elected Democrats was muted by comparison, although the Biden campaign issued a fundraising appeal within minutes of the verdict suggesting that the fundamentals of the election had not changed.

“We're THRILLED that justice has finally been served,” the campaign wrote. “But this convicted criminal can STILL win back the presidency this fall without a huge surge in Democratic support.”

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Strategists predict a muted impact

There has been some polling conducted on the impact of a guilty verdict, although such hypothetical scenarios are notoriously difficult to predict.

A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll found that only 4% of Trump’s supporters said they would withdraw their support if he’s convicted of a felony, though an additional 16% said they would reconsider it.

On the eve of the verdict, the Trump campaign released a memo from its polling team suggesting that the impact of the trial is “already baked into the race in target states.”

Trump campaign advisers argued the case would help them motivate their core supporters. So many donations came into WinRed, the platform the campaign uses for fundraising, that it crashed. Aides quickly worked to set up a backup platform to collect money pouring in.

Trump headed Thursday night to a fundraising event scheduled before the verdict, according to a person familiar with his plans who was not authorized to speak publicly.

His two most senior campaign advisers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, were not with him in New York, but in Palm Beach, Florida, where the campaign is headquartered.

And while it may take days or weeks to know for sure, Trump's critics in both parties generally agreed that there may not be much political fallout, although some were hopeful that the convictions would have at least a marginal impact in what will likely be a close election.

Sarah Longwell, founder of Republican Voters Against Trump, who conducts regular focus groups, suggested the guilty verdict may help Biden on the margins by pushing so-called “double haters” — a term used to describe voters who dislike Trump and Biden — away from Trump.

But more than anything, she suggested that voters simply haven't been following the trial very closely.

“The best thing about the trial ending is that it ended," Longwell said, describing the courtroom proceeding as a distraction from more serious issues in the campaign. “There will now be an opportunity to focus the narrative on who Trump is and what a second Trump term would look like.”

Republican pollster Neil Newhouse predicted that the trial may ultimately have little impact in a lightning-fast news environment with several months before early polls open.

“Voters have short memories and even shorter attention spans,” Newhouse said. “Just as the former president’s two impeachments have done little to dim Trump’s support, this guilty verdict may be overshadowed in three weeks by the first presidential debate.”

A plan to campaign after sentencing

The judge set sentencing for July 11, just four days before the scheduled start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Each of the falsifying business records charges carries up to four years behind bars, though prosecutors have not said whether they intend to seek imprisonment. Nor is it clear whether the judge — who earlier in the trial warned of jail time for gag order violations — would impose that punishment even if asked.

Trump will be able to vote in Florida, where he established residency in 2019, if he is not in prison on Election Day.

And imprisonment would not bar Trump from continuing his pursuit of the White House.

Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who was with the former president in court this week and also serves as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said in a Fox News Channel interview before the verdict that Trump would still try to campaign for the presidency if convicted.

If Trump is given a sentence of home confinement, she said, “We will have him doing virtual rallies and campaign events if that is the case. And we’ll have to play the hand that we’re dealt."

There are no campaign rallies on the calendar for now, though Trump is expected to hold fundraisers next week.

Biden himself has yet to weigh in.

He was spending the night at his family’s beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, after marking the anniversary of his son Beau’s death earlier in the day at church.

Voters grapple with the verdict

Texas voter Steven Guarner, a 24-year-old nurse, said he’s undecided on who he'll vote for in the upcoming election.

Guarner, an independent, said the verdict will be a deciding factor for him once he studies the details of the trial. He didn't think it would sway the many voters who are already decided on the Biden-Trump rematch, however.

“I think his base is the type that might not care much or might agree with him about the court system,” Guarner said of Trump.

Indeed, Republican officials from Florida to Wisconsin to Arkansas and Illinois condemned the verdict as a miscarriage of justice by what they described as a politically motivated prosecutor and blue-state jury.

Brian Schimming, chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s executive committee, called the case against Trump a “sham” and a “national embarrassment.”

“There was no justice in New York today,” Schimming charged.

And Michael Perez Ruiz, a 47-year-old who was ordering food shortly after the verdict at Miami's Versailles restaurant, an icon of the city's GOP-leaning Cuban American community, said he would continue to stand by Trump.

“I would vote for him 20 times,” Perez Ruiz said.

Donald Trump Says 'Real Verdict' Will Be on November 5

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