Former President Donald Trump and his allies immediately tried to flip the script after a New York jury found him guilty Thursday of 34 felonies for falsifying company records.
Most of their criticism on air and on social media reflected the points they made while the trial was ongoing: they felt the judge Juan Merchan there was a conflict, the jury was made up of liberals and the case came down to election interference to boost President Joe Biden.
As the dust from the historic criminal verdict began to clear, Trump and his supporters tried to flood the zone to insist that the system was rigged against him all along.
“We did nothing wrong,” Trump said outside the courthouse Thursday after the unanimous conviction. “I’m a very innocent man.”
Here’s how Trump and his allies went on the offensive:
Attack the judge
In a sense, Trump and his many defenders targeted Merchan, the judge presiding over the case, over a small donation he made to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. It was a reflection of the attack they leveled against him during the trial had committed.
“This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt,” Trump said after the ruling outside the Manhattan courthouse, adding that Merchan “should never have tried this case.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who is in the running to become Trump’s running mate, said on X that the trial “was conducted by an openly pro-Biden judge,” while Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas , said in a Newsmax interview Thursday that Merchan “should have worn a Biden campaign hat while sitting on the bench.”
Merchan donated $15 to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign and an additional $20 to progressive organizations, all through the donation platform ActBlue.
Trump and his supporters also said Merchan should have withdrawn because of his daughter’s employment with a Democratic-leaning campaign organization, Authentic Campaigns. The state court ethics committee advised Merchan that he did not have to recuse himself from the case because his family or family business was not involved.
Liberal jury
Another common refrain from Trump and his boosters was that the jury — and even the group of potential jurors early on — was simply too liberal to get a fair trial because Manhattan overwhelmingly supported Biden in 2020.
“It’s a rigged process, a disgrace,” Trump said Thursday. “They wouldn’t let us change locations. We were at 5% or 6% in this district in this area. This was a rigged, shameful process.”
“Twelve liberal jurors do not decide who the next president is,” Republican Rep. Jim Banks, the Trump-backed Senate candidate in Indiana, wrote on X. “We the people do.”
“The partisan slant of this jury shows why we should litigate politics at the ballot box and not in court,” Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, a potential Trump running mate, said on X.
Trump’s team was directly involved in the jury selection process, and Todd Blanche, Trump’s lead attorney, challenged only one juror. The challenge was denied by Merchan, who said Trump’s team did not have enough reason for it. Merchan also denied an attempt to change the venue, which was seen as a gamble, a week before the start of the trial.
Election interference
At the heart of their opposition, pro-Trump forces said the ultimate goal of the conviction was to boost Biden’s election chances, as well as those of other Democrats.
“We just witnessed the most egregious example of election interference and a blatant travesty of the rule of law in the 246-year history of our republic,” Kari Lake, the Trump-backed Senate candidate in Arizona, said in a statement. The entire process up to and including the verdict itself has been nothing but a shameful political stunt.”
In his Newsmax interview, Cruz said the whole point of the criminal proceedings was so that Democrats could eventually label Trump a “convicted felon.”
“You and I will hear these words repeated by Democrats in the corporate media about a billion times between now and Election Day,” he said. “That was the whole point of shouting, ‘thug, thug, thug, thug.’ This was politics and not law.”
Biden’s involvement
Hand in hand with the argument that the case amounted to election interference was the accusation that Biden himself was in control.
“Joe Biden and his left-wing allies engaged in election interference to prosecute their main political opponent on false charges,” Bernie Moreno, the Trump-backed Senate candidate in Ohio, wrote on X.
There is no indication that the White House was involved in the Manhattan district attorney’s decision to file charges, and Biden stayed out of the process. However, his campaign has at times capitalized on the developments, including holding a media event outside the Manhattan courthouse this week.
In a statement after the verdict, Michael Tyler, communications director for the Biden campaign, said: “Donald Trump has always wrongly believed that he would never face consequences if he broke the law for his own personal gain.”
“But today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people are faced with a simple reality,” he continued. “There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: through the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.”
It is quashed on appeal
Trump allies universally believed the verdict would be overturned on appeal.
“I have no doubt that this affront to justice will be successfully appealed and that President Trump will be acquitted, but we cannot ignore the reckless weaponization of our nation’s justice system by Joe Biden and his allies and the damage done to not ignore the long run that his wickedness has created.” former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Trump-backed candidate for Senate in Michigan, said in a statement.
“This conviction must be immediately overturned on appeal, and this judicial tyranny will be summarily rejected by the American people on November 5,” Lake said in her statement Thursday.
An appeal to George Soros
Republicans were quick to point out that liberal megadonor George Soros is a supporter of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“You have a Soros-backed prosecutor,” Trump said.
Soros donated to the Color of Change PAC, which has backed progressive prosecutors across the country, including Bragg in his 2021 campaign. CNBC reported that people familiar with the donation said it was not intended to specifically support Brag or to target him pressure in any way.
In his statement after the verdict, Bragg said Trump went to great lengths to break the law and “lie” to boost his 2016 campaign.
“Donald Trump is guilty of repeatedly and fraudulently falsifying corporate records in a scheme to hide damaging information from American voters during the 2016 presidential election,” he said. “Each day over the course of the past several weeks, a jury of twelve New Yorkers has been presented with overwhelming evidence—including invoices, checks, bank statements, audio recordings, phone logs, text messages, and direct testimony from 22 witnesses—that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Trump had illegally falsified 34 business documents in New York.
America is a ‘banana republic’
Trump allies made clear they believed the verdict represented America’s decline into something unrecognizable, calling it a “banana republic” or a “s—hole.”
“The Democrats have succeeded in their years-long attempt to turn America into a Third World hole,” his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., wrote on social media. “November 5 is our last chance to save it.”
“This verdict is representative of a banana republic, not a democracy,” Moreno wrote on X.
Others focused on New York, a Democratic stronghold often maligned in redder jurisdictions.
“New York is a liberal slut,” wrote Indiana Senate candidate Banks.
This is good for Trump!
No matter that some voters may be irritated by the idea of voting for a candidate found guilty of felony charges — Trump and his allies see that the political backdrop to the trial will help them energize their supporters and possibly even convert some people who are on the fence.
“The real verdict will be pronounced by the people on November 5, and they know what happened here, and everyone knows what happened here,” Trump said Thursday.
“May 30, 2024, may be remembered as the day Donald J. Trump won the 2024 presidential election,” Trump’s son said Erik Trump posted on X.
“Voters will condemn our two-tier justice system this November,” Banks wrote.
Most surveys show a close race between Trump and Biden, but Trump has had some strong results in battleground surveys and is now generally doing better than ever in his previous attempts to become president. And in 2016 and 2020, he outperformed his poll numbers.
A fundraising bonanza
Although it will be months before Americans know the outcome of the fall elections, the fundraising boost provided by the conviction will be realized in the coming hours. And many Trump allies and officials have already bragged about the success.
“The bad news is that the Biden leftists in New York have made a mockery of our criminal justice system,” Rubio wrote. “The good news is that Americans have sent Trump more than $50 million since this travesty and his deranged enemies just re-elected Trump president!”
He then posted a link to a fundraising page.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
