Friday, May 31, 2024
Islamabad (Urdu Point. DW Urdu. May 31, 2024) Former President Donald Trump, 77, was hacked in his business records and to hide the hush money he paid to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her mouth shut. He was facing 34 charges including producing fake documents.
On Thursday, a 12-member jury in a New York state court found him guilty of all charges, including hush money.
The jury heard the case for more than 11 hours over two days, after which a unanimous verdict was read out in minutes.
He became the first former president in America's 250-year history to be convicted of a crime.
The sentence will be announced on July 11.
In principle, they can be sentenced to four years in prison for each crime, but legal experts say they are more likely to get a reprieve.
The US court declared Trump ineligible for the presidential election
Another US state barred Trump from contesting the election
The court, however, has not stopped Donald Trump from continuing his campaign against President Joe Biden in the November presidential election. They can run their campaign even if they go to jail.
'I'm a very innocent man', Trump
After the court's decision, former President Trump called the trial non-transparent and said the judges' behavior was biased.
He has said that he will appeal against this decision.
Trump immediately defended himself after the jury found him guilty. "I am a very innocent person," he said while talking to reporters.
The court found Trump guilty of sexual abuse of a woman
"I am innocent," Donald Trump's statement in court
He vowed that the 'real decision' would come from the voters.
He termed the trial as 'rigged' and 'humiliating'.
Trump has previously pleaded not guilty to all charges, and has said that President Joe Biden's Democratic allies are conspiring to harm him politically.
Trump's fellow Republicans have also condemned the court's decision. "Today is a shameful day in American history," House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement.
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President Biden's response
President Biden's campaign team released a statement after the court's decision saying the case shows that "no one is above the law."
"The threat Trump poses to our democracy has never been greater," the statement added.
The decision comes at a time when the presidential election is six months away, in which Trump is the presumptive candidate of the Republican Party.
A few weeks later, the Republican National Convention is going to be held, in which Trump will be nominated as the official presidential candidate by the party.
What were the charges against Trump?
Trump was alleged to have once asked his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to pay porn actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 before the 2016 election to keep Daniels from revealing the allegations. That she had a one-night stand with Trump.
Trump falsified his business records for the job.
If Daniels' claim had become public at that time, Trump could have suffered in the election campaign. Prosecutors said the bribery payments and the illegal concealment of the payments were part of a broader crime aimed at keeping voters ignorant of Trump's behavior and character.
Trump's defense lawyers, however, argued that trying to influence the election was simply democracy and that the former president had done nothing wrong.
In addition to the hush money and business records scandal, former President Trump also faces federal and state charges of conspiring to block Biden's confirmation process for president in the 2020 election and taking classified documents with him after leaving the White House.
Legal experts say that even if Trump wins the election and becomes president, as president he will not be able to pardon himself because the case was not established by the federal government but by the state of New York, and the pardon of this sentence can only be granted by New York. Only the governor can give.
