A handful of winners and losers have emerged following the unprecedented trial of former President Trump that found him guilty on all counts.
Trump was found guilty on all counts Thursday after the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office charged him with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.
Trump pleaded not guilty and has maintained his innocence.
Here are some of the winners and losers following the verdict who were involved in or surrounded the case after six weeks of court proceedings.
WINNER: DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE
Prosecutors in District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office finished the Trump trial victorious with the jury finding Trump guilty.
‘I did my job. Our job is to follow the facts and the law without fear or favor. And that’s exactly what we did here. And what I feel is gratitude to work alongside phenomenal public servants who do that each and every day in matters that you all write about. … I did my job. We did our job. Many voices out there. The only voice that matters is the voice of the jury. And the jury has spoken,’ Bragg said Thursday evening.
‘The 12 everyday jurors vowed to make a decision based on the evidence and the law, and the evidence and the law alone. Their deliberations led them to a unanimous conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, Donald J. Trump, is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree to conceal a scheme to corrupt the 2016 election,’ Bragg continued in the press conference, adding that such white collar crimes are at the ‘core to what we do at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.’
The office, however, did face widespread condemnation from conservatives who argued the case should never have been brought in the first case, especially amid the 2024 presidential election when Trump is leading in many polls.
WINNER: DONALD TRUMP
Though Trump was found guilty on all counts, his base has apparently not been swayed by the trial. Google searches for ‘Donald Trump donation site’ spiked when the verdict was announced, while campaign donation site WinRed experienced an outage. The campaign is anticipated to receive a windfall following the verdict Trump slammed as ‘disgraceful.’
‘Very disappointed, I wanted him to be acquitted,’ a male Trump supporter told Fox News Digital outside the courtroom.
‘Just very sad. I wish this case had not been brought.’
Additionally, a recent New York Times poll, which was released amid the trial, found Trump is leading Biden in a majority of key battleground states, including, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
WINNER: DEMOCRATS
The Democratic Party and its lawmakers took a victory lap following Trump’s guilty verdict, including President Biden’s re-election campaign touting: ‘In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law.’
‘Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain. But today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president,’ Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said in a post-verdict statement.
Other Democrats who frequently tussle with Trump and Republicans, such as Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff who said that ‘despite his efforts to distract, delay, and deny – justice arrived for Donald Trump all the same.’
‘It matters that the Republican nominee for president is a convicted criminal,’ Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. posted.
‘Boom,’ Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said in a brief post to X.
LOSER: LEGAL SYSTEM
‘Lawfare’ became a top word punted around by legal experts amid the case, with Trump himself arguing that the Biden administration promoted the case in a bid to hurt his chances of reclaiming the White House come November.
‘Bragg’s scheme was to manipulate the legal system by bringing specious criminal charges to damage or delegitimize Trump’s candidacy for president. It is classic ‘lawfare’ —weaponizing statutes not because the law has been broken but because the accused poses a political threat,’ Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett wrote in an opinion piece published by Fox Digital this week.
Jarrett’s comments echo what many other legal experts have said throughout the trial: lawfare is at play, and the case has thus damaged the legal system overall.
‘We see a legal system that is really disassembling, that is devolving,’ Turley said on Fox News when addressing the ‘selective prosecution’ of Trump.
‘One of the things that is also in jeopardy right now is our judicial branch, and it’s our system of government itself. And I don’t think we can say often enough here, how much that has been abused under this administration with local prosecutors, state prosecutors, and at the federal level, who are using lawfare,’ Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said in a press conference outside of the Manhattan courtroom earlier this month.
New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik also filed an ethics complaint against presiding Judge Juan Merchan for an alleged conflict of interest related to his daughter’s role representing Democrat politicians and political action committees. And sent another letter to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct and the Office of the Inspector General of the New York State Unified Court System, warning of ‘potential misconduct’ regarding Merchan’s repeated assignments to cases involving Trump or his allies.
‘One cannot help but suspect that the ‘random selection’ at work in the assignment of Acting Justice Merchan, a Democrat Party donor, to these cases involving prominent Republicans, is in fact not random at all,’ Stefanik wrote in the letter.
LOSER: DONALD TRUMP
Trump’s guilty verdict could land the 45th president behind bars, or he could even be sentenced to home confinement. Trump could still run for the White House from behind bars, as the Constitution does not place restrictions on presidential candidates based on criminal record. It stipulates that those pursuing the White House be natural-born citizens who are at least 35 years old.
The 45th president will be sentenced on July 11, which is just four days before the Republican National Convention kicks off in Milwaukee that month. Trump vowed Thursday to ‘fight till the end’ after the ‘rigged, disgraceful trial.’
‘This was a rigged, disgraceful trial. The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people,’ Trump said outside the court Thursday.
‘This was a rigged decision right from day one. With a conflicted judge who should have never been allowed to try this case. Never. And we will fight for our Constitution. This is long from over.’
LOSER: ROBERT DE NIRO
Actor Robert De Niro faced backlash at the tail end of the trial when he headlined a Biden-Harris campaign event in Manhattan, where he claimed in public remarks that Trump could ‘destroy the world.’
‘Donald Trump wants to destroy not only the city, but the country. And eventually he could destroy the world,’ De Niro said at the press conference this week. President Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris were present during the campaign event.
Following his remarks, De Niro was shouted down by supporters as a ‘washed-up actor,’ ‘trash,’ and accused of being a ‘paid actor for the DNC.’
‘You’re a f–king idiot,’ De Niro shouted at one of the pro-Trump protesters.
The event was subsequently slammed on social media by critics as a ‘terrible look for Democrats,’ and compared to satirical political comedy show ‘Veep.’
‘​​This was so over-the-top as to simply be useless. And what a stupid mistake on the part of the Biden campaign. More reason why Democratic leaders are probably going to be concerned that he’s the likely nominee of their party,’ Fox News contributor Karl Rove previously said of De Niro’s comments.
