Donald Trump is a convicted felon

There was anticipation, there was exasperation at the wait, and then there it was: a guilty verdict against Donald Trump, delivered by a jury of 12 New Yorkers after two days of deliberation. In fact 34 guilty verdicts, all for falsifying business records. Never before has a former American president been convicted of a crime. Nor has a major-party candidate sought the presidency with a felony record. The overriding question now is whether it will upset Mr Trump’s chances in this year’s race: if the election were held today, polls suggest, he would beat Joe Biden.

The case concerned Mr Trump’s campaign in 2016, back when his presidential bid seemed to many like a chaotic lark. Before the election his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid a porn star to keep her story of sex with the candidate out of the press. Mr Trump approved the hush-money deal and mislabelled his reimbursement to Mr Cohen as legal fees in his company’s books. Since Mr Cohen was repaid in monthly instalments, Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s district attorney, brought 34 counts stemming from those falsely marked payments. Some related to ledger entries, some to cheques and others to invoices. Without a doubt Mr Trump will appeal against the conviction. “Mother Teresa could not beat these charges,” he groused before it came.

There are three reasons to think that the verdict’s damage to Mr Trump will be limited and that he will weather it as he has so much else. First, the felonies are as low-level as they come. Though prosecutors described their case as one of election fraud, that was over-selling things. The actual charges concerned false documents held internally at the Trump Organisation; no one outside it was duped by them. Second, the conduct at issue became public six years ago when Mr Cohen, the prosecutors’ star witness, broke with his former boss. There were few genuine revelations during the trial. Third, the case employed a legal argument so contorted that a reasonable person could say that Mr Bragg, a Democrat elected to his office, was doing partisan gymnastics by bringing it.

Falsifying business records is a misdemeanour (whose statute of limitations in this instance would have expired in 2019). To upgrade the charge to a felony, prosecutors had to show that the records were falsified to commit or conceal another crime. Here they cited a capacious state law that criminalises conspiring to influence an election through unlawful means. They offered three of these. They said that the hush money constituted an illegal campaign contribution; that bank statements and other records were falsified to pay it; and that the reimbursement to Mr Cohen was not properly reported for tax purposes. Prosecutors were helped by the fact that jurors did not need to agree on the precise sort of unlawful means. “It’s called pick ’em. It’s like the lottery pick,” said Mr Trump before the verdict came down.

If that sounds majorly complicated, that’s because it is majorly complicated. Analysts made flow charts to explain the legal theory; others likened it to a multi-layered matryoshka doll. A more straightforward case would have seen Mr Trump charged squarely with violating campaign-finance laws. But only federal prosecutors can bring that charge, and they decided not to several years ago.

Tenuous legal theory aside, it defied common sense to think that Mr Trump did not do what prosecutors alleged. The defence claimed, implausibly, that their client had never slept with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, and that Mr Cohen had acted as a freelancer, without his boss’s blessing. That strained credulity. Mr Trump’s lawyer called Mr Cohen the “human embodiment of reasonable doubt” and said he was guilty of perjury at the trial, which he enunciated nice and slow: “per-jur-ee”.

But it was the defendant who really reeked of eau de sleaze. Witnesses called him a lecher and a penny-pincher. Any mob boss worth his salt would have recognised some of the behaviour described. Underlings said he shunned email to avoid incriminating paper trails. There were hints of obstruction of justice by his associates. Before Mr Cohen flipped in 2018, allies of Mr Trump waged a pressure campaign to keep him on-side. “Sleep well tonight,” wrote one. “You have friends in high places.” Then there was the rogues’ gallery of Mr Trump’s entourage in court, which over the course of the trial included two convicted felons and an aide fighting his own indictment.

Mr Trump’s appeal will probably take years before it concludes. Given the complexity of the legal theory, the verdict could well be reversed. Among the defence’s many arguments will be that the “step-up” offence—the state election law—applies only to state, not federal, officeholders. The option to pick among the various unlawful means is a vulnerability, too.

But before any appeal can get under way, the trial judge will decide on sentencing in a few weeks. Prison—each count carries a maximum of four years—looks highly unlikely for a first-time felon. Even on the off chance that Mr Trump is sent to jail, he would probably not go until his appeals are exhausted.

All that is to say that Mr Trump is actually in a pretty good spot considering his immense legal jeopardy. The other three criminal cases against him are far more significant—they deal with alleged election interference and the mishandling of national-security secrets—but none is expected to go to trial before November. If he wins, he will be able to drop the two indictments brought by federal prosecutors. The other state case, in Georgia, probably would not proceed while he is in office either. That leaves a minor, shaky case about a pay-off to a porn star as the only one to deliver any kind of legal accountability before the 2024 election—and perhaps ever. ■