The Trump campaign revealed it has raised $53 million in the 24 hours since former President Donald Trump was convicted, coming out to more than $2 million per hour.
Earlier on May 31, the campaign announced a small-donor record after raising nearly $35 million by the morning after the verdict.
WASHINGTON–President Joe Biden commented for the first time on Friday on former President Donald Trump’s conviction in a New York trial, calling the claims that the trial was rigged “reckless” and “dangerous.”
“The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed,” President Biden told reporters before delivering a speech on the Middle East.
“Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself. It was a state case, not a federal case,” he continued.
The Biden campaign issued a statement following President Trump's press conference about his criminal conviction, which had been punctuated by criticisms of the incumbent president's policies and cognition.
“America just witnessed a confused, desperate, and defeated Donald Trump ramble about his own personal grievances and lie about the American justice system, leaving anyone watching with one obvious conclusion: This man cannot be president of the United States," stated Biden-Harris 2024 Communications Director Michael Tyler. "Unhinged by his 2020 election loss and spiraling from his criminal convictions, Trump is consumed by his own thirst for revenge and retribution. He thinks this election is about him. But it’s not. It’s about the American people: lowering their costs, protecting their freedoms, defending their democracy.
Right after he finished addressing the nation about his criminal convictions, former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law posted a video clip showing him in a role the public rarely sees: that of grandfather.
A 27-second video clip shows the 77-year-old former president interacting with a grandson and granddaughter. “This is why he does it,” the children’s mother, Lara Trump, wrote on social media, with two heart symbols punctuating the end of her statement.
Within minutes of the video being posted around noon on May 31, it attracted tens of thousands of views on X, formerly Twitter, and hundreds of comments.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government announced on May 31 that it will demand Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his senior counsel, Matthew Colangelo, testify on June 13 following the historic conviction of former President Donald Trump.
The U.S. Secret Service on Friday said that the conviction of former President Donald Trump would have “no bearing” on whether the agency would protect him.
In a statement to The Epoch Times, the agency said that “today’s outcome has no bearing on the manner in which the United States Secret Service carries out its protective mission.”
While it did not elaborate or provide more details, the Secret Service added that “our security measures will proceed unchanged.”
Attorney Will Scharf, a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, vows to “vigorously appeal” his client’s guilty verdict.
Saying the case was “replete with reversible error,” Mr. Scharf told CNN on May 31: “We are going to take this as high and as far as we need to, including to the U.S. Supreme Court, to vindicate President Trump's rights.”
Mr. Scharf asserted that “there was nothing legal, there was nothing normal about what happened in this New York courtroom over the last month and a half.”
President Trump later referred to Mr. Costello by name, after announcing they would be appealing the case on several points.
"And the reason that Bob Costello acted a little bit upset, which I think he has a right to, was because every question that he was being asked was being objected to by the other side and sustained by the judge," President Trump said.
Mr. Costello had said "geez!" after repeated objections, leading to an outburst by the judge.
President Trump said he never thought of Mr. Cohen as a "fixer," and grew to dislike his methods.
"For instance I didn't like that when I became president he went around and made deals with companies. When I heard that he was gone," President Trump said.
Mr. Cohen had testified that he planned to capitalize on his title as personal attorney to the president, and made some $4 million over two years as a consultant because of this title. Prosecutors argued that Mr. Cohen had a lucrative financial plan in this and was therefore not vengeful that he had not been given a White House post as the defense claimed.
President Trump also addressed the payment Mr. Cohen made that led to the claims that formed the basis of the criminal case.
"So we have an NDA, non-disclosure agreement ... totally honorable, totally good. Totally accepted," he said. "Every company has non disclosure agreements. Most of the people in this room has a non-disclosure agreement with their company."
Former President Donald Trump on Friday morning responded to his felony conviction for falsifying business records in New York, saying the trial was “very unfair” and said his team will appeal the case.
“If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” he said. “These are bad people ... these are sick people.”
On multiple occasions, President Trump was critical of the judge overseeing the case, at one point citing his admonishment of one of the Trump team’s witnesses, Robert Costello.
"This was a highly qualified lawyer, now I'm not allowed to use his name because of the gag order, but he's a sleazebag, everybody knows that. Took me a while to find out," President Trump said of his former attorney Michael Cohen. "But he was effective, he did work."
It's unclear whether the judge will consider sanctions for mentions of parties prohibited by the gag order if names are omitted.
President Trump pointed out that Mr. Weisselberg was turning 77 and serving his second prison sentence, and he is currently the same age.
"He's 77 years old. Now normally, I'd say that's an old guy. But I don't feel 77," he said.
President Trump defended former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who is now serving a second prison sentence.
Mr. Weisselberg had pleaded guilty with the district attorney's office to committing perjury in a separate civil case brought by the attorney general's office, and did not testify in the criminal case. He is currently serving a five-month sentence.
President Trump said that prosecutors were allowed to use "salacious" testimony at trial, seeming to refer to witness Stephanie Clifford, better known by her stage name Stormy Daniels.
Ms. Clifford was paid $130,000 by ex-lawyer Michael Cohen for the rights to her story about an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump in 2006.
President Trump maintained the story was not true.
Former President Donald Trump held a press conference the morning after jurors handed him a guilty verdict in his Manhattan criminal trial.
President Trump explained that he wanted to testify but blamed Justice Merchan for allowing prosecutors to ask questions about conduct outside the case.
“I wanted to, but the judge allowed them to go into everything that I was ever involved in, not this case, everything that I was ever involved in, which is a first. Otherwise, you could go into every single thing that I ever did,” he added.
President Trump said the falsifying business records charge is usually a misdemeanor but it "sounds so bad to me."
"That's a bad thing for me, I've never had that before," he said. "I paid a lawyer, totally legal, a legal expense. And a bookkeeper, without any knowledge from me, correctly marked it down in the book. Very professional woman, highly respected, she testified."
President Trump said it was unfair that the judge limited expert testimony for the defense to the point where Trump attorneys opted not to call former FEC commissioner Bradley Smith to define campaign finance terms for the jurors.
"You saw what happened to some of the witnesses that were on our side," he said, seeming to refer to attorney Robert Costello, one of the only two witnesses called by the defense.
President Trump repeated his claims that Justice Merchan, who presided over his case, had a conflict of interest, and then issued a gag order to prevent him from arguing about the conflict of interest.
"Now I'm under a gag order in which nobody's ever been under, no presidential candidates ever been under a gag order before," he said. "Nasty gag order, where I've had to pay thousands of dollars in penalties and fines, and was threatened with jail."
"Think of it, I'm the leading candidate ... and I'm under a gag order," he said.
"This is a case where if they can do this to me they can do this to anyone," President Trump told the crowd gathered at Trump Tower. "These are bad people, these are, I believe in many cases, sick people; when you look at our country, what's happening, millions and millions of people of people are flowing in from all parts of the world, not just South America, from Africa, from Asia from the Middle East, and they're coming in from jails and prisons, and they're coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums that are coming in from all over the world into our country."
"And we have a president and a group of fascists that don't want to do anything about it, because they could right now today, he can stop it. But he's not they're destroying our country. Our country is in very bad shape. And they're very much against me saying these things," he said.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who was the lead prosecutor in former President Donald Trump’s first House impeachment trial in 2019, spoke on MSNBC to discuss the guilty verdict in the Manhattan criminal trial.
“This is going to take a while to sink in for the American people,” the congressman said.
“But I believe the American people are not going to want a convicted felon running the country; they're not going to want to turn the country into some kind of a criminal enterprise.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a regular critic of former President Donald Trump, called his guilty verdict in the Manhattan criminal trial a “great victory for the justice system within a liberal democracy” while speaking on MSNBC.
“To me, it was a beautiful thing to watch. Obviously, the process has not completely played out. The convicted defendant in this case, Donald Trump, has the right to appeal, and we should all respect the appeals process like we're respecting the trial process,” Mr. Raskin said.
He called the Republicans supporting President Trump “members of a religious cult who are sleeping on the basement floor someplace just listening to the tapes of a cult leader.”
The Trump campaign reported a “record-shattering, small-dollar fundraising haul” of $35 million by the morning after former President Donald Trump was convicted on felony charges in New York.
That’s “nearly double the biggest day ever recorded for the Trump campaign on the WinRed platform,” the campaign’s statement said. Those totals were announced just before 10 a.m. on May 31, less than 24 hours after the conviction was announced.
“Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrats with their election interference political witch hunt have awakened the MAGA movement like never before,” the campaign said.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley projected the fundraising following the historic and unprecedented conviction of former President Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
“I think we're waiting to see what those numbers are going to be, but they're going to be big,” he said on Fox News. “The fact is that we had so much traffic, that it actually crashed our website, we were able to get it back up quickly.”
Lara Trump said on the network last night that the number of donations was “in the millions.”
In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s conviction, the nation’s largest club of his fans announced that he will join them for a celebration of his 78th birthday in two weeks.
Club 47 USA, named after his aspiration to become the nation’s 47th president, will meet on June 14, which is also Flag Day, at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in Palm Beach, Florida.
The announcement was sent just before 9 a.m. via email to the Club 47 mailing list, heralding, “President Donald J. Trump is our keynote speaker!”
The leader of the European nation of Hungary remains steadfast in his support of former President Donald Trump in the wake of his conviction on 34 felony charges.
Viktor Orban, prime minister of Hungary, posted on social media early on May 31, hours after the verdict: “I’ve known [President Trump] to be a man of honour. As President, he always put America first, he commanded respect around the world and used this respect to build peace. Let the people make their verdict this November! Keep on fighting, Mr. President!”
Mr. Orban and President Trump have met in person several times, most recently at the former president’s home in Florida about three months ago, The Epoch Times reported. The pair discussed border security during that meeting.
- Former President Donald Trump is holding a press conference today after he was convicted in the first of four criminal cases against him to go to trial. President Trump is still under a gag order that prohibits him from making public statements about parties in the case, but he has said he is willing to risk the jail time sanctions in order to speak out. Check back for updates at 11 a.m. ET
A Manhattan jury took fewer than 12 hours to return a verdict in former President Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial, finding him guilty of 34 counts of falsification of business records with the intent to conceal another crime.
The former president’s conviction makes him the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime.
Short of a successful appeal, he could now be facing such penalties as jail time, probation, or fines.
After weeks of testimony, the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump is now in the hands of the jury, with the outcome unpredictable.
Without cameras in the courtroom, news outlets relied on those attending the trial, many not even attending every day, to “report” whether Trump or the prosecution is “winning.” With some exceptions, the hosts and pundits on outlets like CNN and MSNBC argued both the law and evidence warranted a guilty verdict. Host and analysts on conservative outlets saw the trial differently, and argued the law and facts compel at least a hung jury, if not an acquittal, despite the overwhelmingly anti-Trump Manhattan voters.
Some Democrats took a victory lap over the unprecedented conviction of former President Donald Trump on May 30.
After more than 11 hours of deliberation, 12 jurors reached the unanimous verdict in the case at Manhattan Criminal Court, convicting the presumptive GOP presidential nominee on 34 first-degree counts of falsifying business records related to a payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.
While GOP lawmakers expressed anger over the verdict, Democrat lawmakers on social media celebrated President Trump becoming a felon.
A Manhattan jury took fewer than 12 hours to return a verdict in former President Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial, finding him guilty of 34 counts of falsification of business records with the intent to conceal another crime.
The former president’s conviction makes him the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime.
Short of a successful appeal, he could now be facing such penalties as jail time, probation, or fines.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to reveal whether prosecutors will seek a prison sentence for former President Donald Trump after a guilty verdict was returned on May 30.
“While this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we arrived today at this trial and ultimately this verdict in the same manner as every other case that comes through the courtroom doors,” he said at a press conference held hours after jurors convicted the former president.
Mr. Bragg declined to answer questions related to sentencing, saying only that they would present their arguments to the court through motions and at the hearing.
The outcome of former President Donald Trump’s New York records-falsification trial is most likely to influence undecided voters—a sliver of the electorate that could exert an outsized impact on the Nov. 5 presidential election.
“This is a pivotal moment in the 2024 race,” American political history professor Jeff Bloodworth told The Epoch Times as jurors began deliberations on May 29.
Mr. Bloodworth, who teaches at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, said suburban college-educated voters probably would allow the trial’s outcome to influence their votes.
Former President Donald Trump responded after a jury in Manhattan found him guilty of falsifying business records, saying it’s a “disgrace” and a “rigged” affair.
The former president made the comments to reporters after leaving the courtroom, also saying it’s a “witch hunt” allegedly carried out at the behest of the White House.
“The real verdict is going to be on November 5 by the people,” he said, adding: “This was a rigged decision from day one.”