Despite Donald Trump being the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes, he still has a right to contest for another term in office as the country’s constitution does not prohibit anyone with a criminal record from doing so.
On Thursday, a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a pσrn actor who said the two had sεx.
Trump sat stone-faced while the verdict was read as cheering from the street below could be heard in the hallway on the courthouse’s 15th floor where the decision was revealed after more than nine hours of deliberations.
“This was a rigged, disgraceful trial,” an angry Trump told reporters after leaving the courtroom. “The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people. They know what happened, and everyone knows what happened here.”
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The conviction, and even imprisonment, will not bar Trump from continuing his White House pursuit.
Nothing in the US Constitution bars a convicted criminal from running for the nation’s highest office, University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard L. Hasen has consistently said.
“The Constitution contains only limited qualifications for running for office (being at least 35 years old, a natural born citizen, and at least 14 years a resident of the U.S.),” Hasen continued.
Trump faces three other felony indictments, but the New York case may be the only one to conclude the November election, adding to the significance of the outcome. Though the legal and historical implications of the verdict are readily apparent, the political consequences are less so given its potential to reinforce rather than reshape already hardened opinions about Trump.
Trump Lawyer Todd Blanche to Appeal Verdict
Donald Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche told CNN‘s Kaitlan Collins Thursday that the former president’s legal team plans to argue in its appeal of the verdict that the jury was biased against Trump and the timing of the trial was unfair.
“Every single person on the jury knew Donald Trump as president, as candidate, from ‘The Apprentice’ so I don’t accept that this was a fair place to try President Trump,” Blanche said.
He added: “There was so much publicity around the witnesses and around – leading up to the trial that our system of justice isn’t supposed to be a system where every person who walks into the courtroom knows about the case.”
“The law says a person is entitled to a fair trial in front of a jury of their peers and we just think that because of everything around the lead up this trial, it made it very difficult for the jury to evaluate the evidence kind of independent of what they knew coming in,” Blanche said.
Blanche previewed that Trump’s legal team will now “vigorously fight” with motions due in a few weeks. And “if that is not successful,” the attorney said they will appeal following the sentencing in July.
