Trump Spews False Claims and Fury in Wake of Conviction (2024)

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Here’s what to know after Trump’s conviction.

President Biden said a few hours later that Mr. Trump’s remarks were reckless, dangerous and irresponsible. Mr. Trump, who did not testify in the trial, had been “given every opportunity to defend himself,” Mr. Biden said.

“Our justice system has endured for nearly 250 years, and it literally is the cornerstone of America,” Mr. Biden said at the White House. “The justice system should be respected.”

Mr. Trump’s sentencing is set for July 11. He faces probation or up to four years in prison.

Here is what else to know:

• At Trump Tower on Friday, Mr. Trump continued to attack people who testified against him in the seven-week trial, specifically his former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, the star witness for the prosecution. He also admitted that he had gotten “very upset” with his lawyers.

• The guilty verdict gave President Biden’s campaign a fresh way to frame the 2024 election: a stark choice between someone who is a felon and someone who is not. The verdict is likely to focus attention on Mr. Trump in a way that Mr. Biden’s supporters have long hoped it would.

• Though Mr. Trump has promised to appeal, any such effort will take time, and New York’s appellate system could take years to dispose of the case. Read more about what comes next in the legal process.

• Despite his felony conviction, Mr. Trump can still run for president. The Constitution sets very few eligibility requirements, and there are no limitations based on character or criminal record. If elected, Mr. Trump could not pardon himself because presidential pardon power does not extend to state cases.

• Mr. Trump’s campaign said it had raised $34.8 million after the verdict, shattering online records for Republicans. That money will help him close the gap with Mr. Biden, who has so far held the financial advantage.

• Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, risked his reputation by indicting Mr. Trump in a case that some prominent Democrats said wasn’t strong enough to have brought against a former president. Instead, Mr. Bragg cemented his place in history as the first prosecutor to convict a former president.

Trump’s conviction renews a push to strip his name from a New York park.

His name has gradually disappeared from skyscrapers in Manhattan, golf courses in the Bronx and skating rinks in the heart of Midtown.

And now, less than 24 hours after he became the first American president to be convicted of a felony, state lawmakers are looking to revive a push to strip Mr. Trump of one of his few remaining monuments: Donald J. Trump State Park.

Located some 35 miles north of the New York City border, the park — whose signage dots the Taconic State Parkway in northern Westchester County — has generally attracted more curiosity and disapproval than it has visitors.

Mr. Trump donated the 436-acre plot to the State of New York in 2006 after plans to develop it into a luxurious private golf course fell apart. He had purchased the land for less than $3 million in the late 1990s, and received a substantial tax deduction in return. The precise value of this gift is not clear, but Mr. Trump has valued it at $26.1 million. For the 2006 tax year, he reported noncash charitable contributions of $34 million on his tax returns.

But without an endowment to fund park maintenance, or additional support from the state, the park fell into disrepair. By 2010, the state had opted to shutter it rather than pay for its upkeep, enraging the future president.

“If they’re going to close it, I’ll take the land back,” he fumed to a New York Times reporter at the time.

For nearly a decade, the park moldered, becoming overgrown and covered in graffiti. An attempt to turn a portion of the land into a dog park was halted after it was discovered that one of the structures on the property contained asbestos.

In 2019, State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Democrat of Manhattan, proposed removing Mr. Trump’s name from the park, arguing that keeping the then-president’s name was contrary to the state parks’ mission of uplifting and unifying New Yorkers. The measure passed the Senate in 2021, but has yet to come to the floor of the Assembly.

A current version of the bill has been filed, but has yet to make it out of committee. And with just four legislative days left in the session before it is scheduled to end on June 6, any bill would seem to face an uphill climb.

The park has seen some improvements in recent years. Senator Hoylman-Sigal noted a picnic area, a short trail and woodlands during a visit a few years ago.

“It isn’t as well maintained as many state parks, but there have been some improvements to it,” he said.

It also seems likely that a fair number of visitors to the park voted for Mr. Trump: In voting districts to the north and east of the park in Yorktown and Yorktown Heights, Mr. Trump drew more votes than President Biden in 2020.

Even so, Senator Hoylman-Sigal said that recent events had contributed to a flurry of interest in both houses that he believed could reinvigorate the measure to change the park’s name.

“We hope the verdict primes the pump,” he said.

Susanne Craig contributed reporting.

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A Wisconsin voter pauses on the idea of voting for a felon. But just for a moment.

And the paying of hush money to a p*rn star on the eve of the 2016 election? “That’s not a crime,” the cheerful 76-year-old said under a cool sunny sky, with Lake Michigan behind her. “There are payoffs all the time.”

But when she considered actually voting for a convicted criminal for president, Ms. Ryder hesitated for a moment. She wondered out loud whether her chosen candidate, Mr. Trump, would even be able to serve. Then she reached her conclusion.

“I cannot vote for Joe Biden, but if he is the other choice, I would” vote for Mr. Trump, she said.

Voters in Wisconsin are well aware of how much weight their decisions carry in presidential elections. The state narrowly sided with Mr. Trump in 2016, then narrowly swung to Mr. Biden four years later. In the most recent polling, it is perhaps Mr. Biden’s strongest state, though by no means does he have a clear lead. Ms. Ryder said she gets her news from Fox News Channel and CNN, and avoids the more liberal MSNBC.

She did not appear particularly troubled by the silencing of the p*rn star, Stormy Daniels, just before voters went to the polls in 2016. After all, she said, Ms. Daniels had struck first, breaking her nondisclosure agreement with her threat to go public.

Partisanship largely prevails in Arizona suburbs after verdict.

Still, some voters who identified as Republicans said their dissatisfaction with Mr. Biden ran so deep that nothing — even Mr. Trump’s felony conviction — could convince them to vote for the president in November. And echoing Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, his supporters suggested that the process had been biased from the start.

“I think that this was all a setup and rigged just like the election,” said Marty Lee, 77, of Scottsdale, who was wearing a T-shirt that read “We the People Are Pissed Off.” The trial was “a kangaroo court,” he added. (False claims that the election was rigged, pushed by Mr. Trump and his allies, have been repeatedly debunked, and there is no basis for the suggestion that the case or the verdict was rigged.)

Some who identified as so-called Never Trump conservatives cautiously celebrated a victory that they hoped would be a much-needed salve for a beleaguered nation.

“It’s kind of a relief,” said Tom Tischer, 78, a Republican who hoped for an alternative to Mr. Biden though he acknowledged that he would most likely support him in November. “The country needs some relief. If we can’t love each other, what’s the use?”

Many residents interviewed by The New York Times said they were dismayed by the two major-party choices facing them in November. For Oscar Cisneros, 50, the difficult decision of whom to back got even tougher when Mr. Trump was convicted.

Mr. Cisneros, who said that he was an independent voter and that he worked for the City of Phoenix, supported Mr. Biden in 2020. But he said that he had been put off more recently by the president’s age and apparent slip-ups, and that he was undecided about whom to vote for in the fall. But now, he said, Mr. Trump had added to his baggage.

“It gives you a different point of view. How can you be a president if you’re being found guilty of hush money?” he asked. “OK, dude, you’re guilty. I don’t know if I want you up there.”

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In the crucial swing state of North Carolina, divided voters agree on one thing: They are worried.

And for Justine Norman, of Wake Forest, N.C., there was also a feeling of sadness.

“This is our home, and as a parent, you try to raise your kids with values,” Ms. Norman said. “But to see how our nation has run amok, no one wants to be honorable.”

Ms. Norman said she would not be supporting Mr. Trump this fall, but was unsure if she’d support Mr. Biden or a third-party candidate instead. She felt slightly dispirited by reactions from both sides: a conviction of a former president, however justified, she said, was nothing to celebrate in a healthy democracy, and defending the immoral decisions of Mr. Trump was also unhealthy.

“We’re living in an era when people view the wrong right, and the right wrong,” she said.

Sue Kay, a Republican in the town of Apex in Wake County, which leans Democratic, said she was “disgusted” by the conviction.

“There are businessmen in New York who cheat everyday,” Ms. Kay said, alluding to the sexual encounter that prosecutors said Mr. Trump had paid the p*rn star, Stormy Daniels, to cover up. “But that’s none of my business. That has nothing to do with you being in the presidency.”

Ms. Kay, who is in her 50s, said her vote for Mr. Trump was locked in before the trial and it won’t change now.

However the verdict influences North Carolinians at the ballot box, the state will almost certainly play a major role in the presidential election. In 2020, Mr. Trump won North Carolina by 1.3 percentage points, the smallest margin of any state colored red that year. The Biden campaign sees North Carolina as winnable and will be opening 10 field offices across the state.

Still, many voters appeared to be fixed to their political corners on Friday.

Mike Hunt, a Durham resident and a Trump supporter, expressed disbelief over the former president’s treatment during the trial.

“I’m not saying that he didn’t do some of that,” he said. “But the case was a scam.”

Ricky Stone, 64, who lives outside of Apex, found it powerful to see the country’s criminal justice system treat Mr. Trump “no different than any other citizen.”

“If he’s found guilty, then he should be treated like everyone else,” said Mr. Stone, who is planning to vote for Mr. Biden. “He’s not above the law.”

In Philadelphia, Trump verdict elicits both anxiety and satisfaction.

Both Democrats and Republicans view Pennsylvania as key to their electoral victories in November. Mr. Trump won the state in 2016, and President Biden notched a narrow victory there in 2020. Since then, he has traveled to the state a number of times, visiting Philadelphia with Vice President Kamala Harris in a rare joint appearance to rally Black voters just this week. Still, even as the verdict has rattled the presidential race, it is unclear if it will drastically change voters’ minds in the must-win battleground state.

Ian Villarreal, 46, a registered nurse who said he was considering supporting a third-party candidate for the first time in November, called the verdict “a slippery slope.”

“I don’t think that Trump is innocent. But it’s a dangerous, slippery slope because they’re setting a precedent,” he said. “Every election cycle, people are going to be taking each other to court.”

For some voters, the verdict brought back old feelings. Pernell Stevens, 56, recalled the former president’s businesses in Atlantic City, N.J., and said he did not mind him then. But as a presidential candidate, he saw him as corrupt and untrustworthy. News of the verdict only reinforced his disdain.

“I’m not a Donald Trump fan,” said Mr. Stevens, who considers himself a Democrat but has not always voted in presidential elections. He said he supported President Biden in 2020 and will vote for him again in November if it means stopping Mr. Trump from winning another term.

“Donald Trump is not a good candidate,” he said. “What is he doing for the Americans? Nothing. It’s not up to him. It’s up to the Democrats and the Republicans. They run this — not him.”

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Trump’s conviction binds the G.O.P. even closer to him.

Echoing Mr. Trump in casting the New York case as a disgraceful sham, Republican candidates and party committees used the first criminal conviction of a former president as a rallying cry — for campaign cash, for congressional hearings and for motivation to vote in November.

Whether they were congressional leaders, potential running mates or onetime rivals, prominent Republicans’ speedy alignment behind Mr. Trump, with little dissent or discussion, was no surprise for a party that has increasingly made displays of Trumpian loyalty a nonnegotiable requirement. But their ready-made outrage was not just about lining up behind the nominee. It was also about basking in the energy of a party base that remains as adhered to Mr. Trump as ever.

“The base has never been more motivated,” said Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas, Mr. Trump’s former doctor in the White House and a close ally.

In a 33-minute speech in the same Trump Tower lobby where he began his first presidential bid nearly nine years ago, Mr. Trump denounced his prosecutors as “sick people” on Friday and criticized the key witness in the case, seeking to pivot his candidacy from the confines of a Manhattan courtroom to the campaign trail.

The Trump campaign’s announcement on Friday evening that it had raised nearly $53 million online in the 24 hours after a jury found Mr. Trump guilty on all 34 felony charges was a reminder of how thoroughly he has persuaded Republican voters that his own legal threats are a proxy for attacks on them.

“People now see Donald Trump as a symbol of something,” Speaker Mike Johnson said on Fox News on Friday. “He’s more than just an individual. He’s a symbol of fighting back against this government corruption, the deep state, the bureaucracy and all the rest.”

There were virtually no calls among prominent Republicans for Mr. Trump to step aside. Mr. Trump’s July 11 sentencing date — he could receive probation or up to four years in prison — will be held only days before he is formally nominated at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Those few who offered even muted words of respect for “the legal process” earned immediate rebukes.

Instead, numerous Republican candidates and groups reported a swell of campaign contributions. The Republican campaign arms of both the House and Senate said they had set new highs for the election cycle in terms of online donations. Mr. Jackson’s spokeswoman said the Texas congressman had raised 10 times as much as in a typical day. The House speaker set up a new website to split donations with Mr. Trump — and gave the URL a shout-out during his Fox News appearance.

“This was never about justice — this is about plastering ‘convicted felon’ all over the airwaves,” Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, who has been auditioning to be Mr. Trump’s running mate, said on CNN. He added, “The only thing that Donald Trump is guilty of is being in the courtroom of a political sham trial.”

Another vice-presidential aspirant, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, wrote on X, “Don’t just get angry about this travesty, get even!” He linked to a Trump donation page.

Mr. Rubio and Mr. Vance were among eight Senate Republicans who signed a letter on Friday stating that they would no longer confirm Biden administration appointees, fund “non-security related funding” for the administration or allow for expedited passage of Democratic legislation that wasn’t “directly relevant to the safety of the American people.” They wrote that the White House “has made a mockery of the rule of law,” suggesting the false theory that Mr. Biden was behind the prosecution.

Meanwhile, House Republicans announced plans to go after prosecutors who had targeted Mr. Trump.

Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who is a close Trump ally, said he was summoning the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, and one of his prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, to Capitol Hill to answer allegations that they had politicized and weaponized law enforcement against Mr. Trump.

Mr. Jordan previously clashed with the Manhattan district attorney’s office when he demanded that a former prosecutor testify under subpoena. Mr. Bragg sued to try to block the testimony, but the Judiciary Committee prevailed. The former prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, was forced to appear at a deposition, but he declined to answer questions, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

President Biden addressed the verdict briefly at the White House for the first time, declaring on Friday, “The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed” and denouncing Mr. Trump’s claims of a rigged trial as “dangerous” and “reckless.” As Mr. Biden walked out of the room, a reporter shouted that Mr. Trump referred to himself as a “political prisoner” and blamed Mr. Biden. The president paused, turned, smiled and then kept walking without answering.

On the campaign trail, some Republicans moved swiftly to try to put Democrats on the defensive over the conviction. In Montana and Ohio, conservative states where Democratic senators are on the ballot, Republicans criticized the Democratic incumbents for their silence. The National Republican Senatorial Committee called Senators Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester cowards for not denouncing the trial. House Republicans challenged Democrats similarly in more conservative districts.

It was a different story in the swing House seats occupied by vulnerable Republicans seeking re-election in districts that voted for Mr. Biden in 2020. There, Democrats were highlighting Republicans’ continued allegiance to and endorsem*nt of a nominee who is now a felon.

Not far beneath the G.O.P. bravado was simmering concern in some corners that the conviction could damage Mr. Trump by turning off all-important independent voters. Mr. Trump’s ability to win over voters who dislike both him and Mr. Biden is widely seen as a key factor in the race.

“A conviction on 34 felony counts is not a win for anybody,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster. “The impact of this conviction is reduced because of the weakness and unpopularity of the alternative. If the Democrats had a stronger nominee, the impact of this case would be more severe.”

Still, Mr. Ayres added, “changes at the margins might affect the outcome in swing states.”

Mr. Biden’s campaign has not banked heavily on the criminal trial and its results. Rather, the president’s team has focused on abortion rights and the argument that Mr. Trump is unworthy of another term because he poses a threat to democracy, citing his refusal to concede the 2020 election and the violent riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Republicans have tried to use the prosecution of Mr. Trump in Manhattan — on charges related to hush-money payments made to a p*rn actress before the 2016 election — to make the threat-to-democracy accusation in reverse.

“If we allow the standard that you can throw your political opponents in jail because they’re doing better than you in an election, it will be the end of this country as we know it,” Mr. Vance said.

Mr. Johnson, the House speaker, urged the Supreme Court to intervene in the case, warning of the dimming faith of Americans in “our system of justice itself.”

“I think that the justices on the court — I know many of them personally — I think they’re deeply concerned about that as we are,” Mr. Johnson said.

The Supreme Court is currently considering whether former presidents have some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution, a decision stemming from a different criminal case against Mr. Trump, this one over charges that he plotted to subvert the 2020 election.

In some ways, the nearly unanimous and unified G.O.P. reaction felt inevitable after Mr. Trump’s rivals in the 2024 primary declined to use his indictments against him. Instead, the criminal charges repeatedly drove the party closer to the former president.

Back when the New York indictment first came down 15 months ago, Mr. Trump’s chief rival at the time, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, struggled to muster a response. He attacked Mr. Bragg for pursuing a “political agenda,” but he also mocked Mr. Trump’s problematic personal behavior that undergirded the charges.

“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a p*rn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” Mr. DeSantis said. “I just — I can’t speak to that.”

After the verdict on Thursday, Mr. DeSantis struck a very different tone, unequivocally denouncing the outcome in what he said was a “kangaroo court.”

Alyce McFadden contributed reporting.

Trump’s conviction gives his talkative hometown something new to dispute.

For seven weeks, during the first criminal trial of a U.S. president, the New Yorkers bustled as usual — making deals, walking fast, paying rent, bemoaning the Mets. And on Friday, they engaged in the communal experience of expressing their delight and discontent with the verdict and one another.

Andrew Goff, 56, a money manager who lives in Manhattan next to Trump International Hotel & Tower at Columbus Circle, said he hoped Thursday’s verdict would help America reach conclusions about Mr. Trump that New York had realized decades ago.

“He has been a criminal all his adult life,” Mr. Goff said, walking his Maltese mix, Kirby, in Central Park. “New Yorkers were forced to realize this because it was so obvious and it’s in our backyard.”

Nearby, in the shadow of the Plaza Hotel, Norman Allred, 65, lamented how he, a disabled veteran, learned and adhered to codes of honorable behavior, but that Mr. Trump did not.

That impression was cemented decades ago, Mr. Allred said, when Mr. Trump took out a full-page ad calling for the executions of five Black and Latino teenagers who were falsely accused of rape in nearby Central Park. It filled Mr. Allred with both pride and pleasure that Mr. Trump, having fled New York as a pariah, had been forced to return to finally be pronounced a felon.

“Even though you moved to Florida, welcome back to New York,” said Mr. Allred, a food-cart worker who, like Mr. Trump, was born and raised in Queens. “You might’ve fooled the rest of the country, but you didn’t fool us in New York.”

The locus of activity on Friday was just blocks from the Plaza, at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, the gaudy fulcrum of Mr. Trump’s real-estate empire. Across Fifth Avenue, camera crews, supporters and protesters cluttered the sidewalk. Commuters opened car windows to yell, “Lock him up!” or “Loser!” A minivan drove by blasting rap music with lyrics inspired by Mr. Trump. One man paused his morning jog to snap a selfie in front of the tower, his middle finger aloft.

Above the dense crowd, construction workers atop a scaffolding displayed a piece of plywood spray-painted with the words “TRUMP 2024” in streaky orange. As Mr. Trump in a news conference inside denounced his trial as “rigged” and assailed the judge in a speech riddled with falsehoods, the crush of people outside shouted competing chants, yelling “Guilty, Guilty” or “Let’s Go Brandon,” a taunt mocking President Biden.

Kevin Wells, 54, a Trump supporter from the Bronx who was standing on Fifth Avenue with his scooter, said he thought Mr. Trump had been unfairly targeted, and that he worried the proceedings had set a bad precedent.

Colleen Ortiz, 50, another ardent Trump supporter from the Bronx, said the verdict would only galvanize his fans. Ms. Ortiz cited as evidence the fact that traffic had slowed on the Republican Party’s online fund-raising platform on Thursday, thanks to a flood of donations.

“The Democrats and the powers that be do not want him in office,” she said, calling the charges “a victimless crime.” She added, “This is going to backfire and he is going to win in November.”

Lennox Hannan, 63, a writer who lives in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, rushed out Friday morning to fetch his daily newspaper — but it wasn’t there, stolen, he presumed, by another collector of history.

So, he ran out to a nearby pharmacy and bought its last copy, eager to frame the conviction in poetic terms: The city, he said, that first realized Mr. Trump was a fraud in the 1980s was the first to bring him to justice four decades later.

“Hopefully, here is the beginning of his downfall — where it all began for him,” Mr. Hannan said.

Robert Clark, 63, a photographer who also lives in the neighborhood, called Thursday’s verdict “more significant than Watergate,” and said that he believed it would save democracy. Mr. Clark, who grew up in western Kansas and cast his first vote for Ronald Reagan, called it a victory for the rule of law.

“I don’t know how the Republicans can call themselves the party of law enforcement,” Mr. Clark said.

At Trump Village, an apartment complex in Coney Island, Brooklyn, that was built by Mr. Trump’s father, Fred Trump, the consensus was that Thursday’s verdict was a disgrace.

Vernon Schlamowitz, 89, a retired pharmacist who has lived in the complex for more than 60 years, said he didn’t think the conviction would affect Mr. Trump’s candidacy. He urged Mr. Biden to pardon Mr. Trump — just as, he said, President Ford had pardoned President Nixon for any crimes he committed in office. (Mr. Biden could not pardon Mr. Trump, who was convicted of a state-level case, even if he wanted to.)

Alejandra Arias, 32, said she was too busy working as an assistant teacher at a school in Jackson Heights, Queens, to pay attention to the trial. When her mother told her that Mr. Trump had been convicted, she was happy, she said, but did not anticipate the verdict affecting her life much.

“He was convicted and has to pay for the consequences,” said Ms. Arias, perched on a bench during a break at school. “But I feel like life goes on, no matter what happened to him.”

To Ms. Arias, Trump’s personality and deeds shouldn’t reflect poorly on Queens or the city at large. “I don’t think it says anything about the city, because everybody is different,” she said, adding, “We have different beliefs, values, and things like that.”

On Staten Island, a bastion of Trump supporters amid the city’s vast liberal landscape, Horace Jones, 68, stood in a small auto shop in Tottenville that hung a flag saying “Make America Great Again.” Mr. Jones and three of his friends, expressed frustration with the verdict, denouncing Manhattan’s liberal culture and swankier ZIP codes.

If the trial had taken place on Staten Island, the verdict might have been the same, Mr. Jones said, but it would have seemed more fair.

Another Staten Islander, George Callas, offered a more nuanced take, saying that he understood the jurors’ decision but that he sympathized with Mr. Trump’s frustration with the composition of Manhattan’s jury pool.

“He argued that he couldn’t get a fair trial, and you know what, I think he really believes that,” said Mr. Callas, 79, who described himself as a moderate who has voted for Democrats and Republicans. “I really think he believes that he can’t get a fair shake in this city.”

In Prospect Park, Brooklyn, on Friday afternoon, Sarah Williams, 72, a semiretired psychiatrist for the city, said she was skeptical that Mr. Trump’s conviction would affect his prospects in the election, though she wished it would.

“I hope that it will kind of tarnish his appearance of, you know, ‘he can get out of anything.’ He didn’t get out of this one,” Ms. Williams said. “But I’m mostly just relieved that he didn’t win the case. I think if he won the case, we would be in deep trouble.”

Back in the Trump Tower mayhem, David Thomas lamented what he called “the clown show,” the daily presence of police cars, barricades and news media that has interfered with his commute. Leaning against the side of a nearby building, Mr. Thomas, 53, said people should be focusing on the three other criminal cases in which Mr. Trump has been charged.

He said he did not care if a husband was a cad — “listen, whatever. That’s his business,” he said. But, he added, “when you overthrow the government and try and disrupt our democracy? That’s an issue.”

Mark Samuels, 70, a retired advertiser who grew up on Staten Island, conceded that Mr. Trump made a certain garish sense in New York long ago, but he said that now, “his legacy is just beyond trash.”

He added: “We’re in one of the most important cities on earth and he came and he fell. It’s his rise and fall.”

Olivia Bensimon, Maia Coleman and Wesley Parnell contributed reporting.

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6 weeks, 22 witnesses: Highlights from Trump’s trial.

Central to the case was a $130,000 payment made days before the election to a p*rn star, Stormy Daniels, who said she had had sex with Mr. Trump a decade earlier, and his reimbursem*nts to his former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, who had paid her off. Mr. Trump was convicted of falsifying business records to try to hide his payments to Mr. Cohen.

Here are the highlights of the criminal trial, which spanned seven weeks, featured 22 witnesses and detailed trysts, celebrity gossip, financial documents and hush-money deals.

A Scheme to Influence the 2016 Election

In the first weeks of the trial, witnesses called by the prosecution portrayed a clandestine scheme involving Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohen and the supermarket tabloid The National Enquirer, who worked to bury damaging allegations about Mr. Trump while promoting positive coverage of him and negative coverage of his rivals.

That testimony began with David Pecker, the tabloid’s former publisher and the first witness who took the stand. Mr. Pecker described a mutually beneficial relationship with Mr. Trump that dated to when Mr. Trump hosted the popular reality television show “The Apprentice.”

But there was a shift in that relationship that started shortly after Mr. Trump announced his presidential campaign in 2015. On the stand, Mr. Pecker detailed a pivotal meeting in August 2015 at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan. There, he said, Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen asked him how he could “help the campaign.”

“I said what I would do is I would run, or publish, positive stories about Mr. Trump, and I would publish negative stories about his opponents,” Mr. Pecker testified.

Mr. Pecker detailed three specific deals reached to help Mr. Trump before the election.

One involved a doorman at a Trump Organization property who shared an apparently false rumor that Mr. Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock. The Enquirer reached a deal in 2016 to pay the man $30,000 for the tip, effectively burying the story.

The next deal involved Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who said she had a monthslong affair with Mr. Trump that started in 2006. Mr. Pecker said he spoke with Mr. Trump about her and with Mr. Cohen about how to handle her claim. Mr. Trump called her a “nice girl,” Mr. Pecker testified.

The Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., ended up paying $150,000 to buy the rights to her story and then bury it, a tactic known as “catch and kill.” Mr. Pecker said on the stand that the The Enquirer had no intention of printing Ms. McDougal’s account and that the deal was intended to help Mr. Trump’s campaign.

The Silenced p*rn Star

The heart of the case, as well as the criminal scheme to influence the election, was the silencing of Ms. Daniels.

Around the same time Ms. McDougal’s hush-money deal was made, Mr. Pecker said, The Enquirer had been discussing buying the silence of Ms. Daniels to assist Mr. Trump.

When Ms. Daniels testified during the trial, she said under oath what she has been saying for years: that she met Mr. Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nev., in 2006 and had sex with him in his hotel room.

Ms. Daniels said that she had considered going public about her account, which Mr. Pecker heard about in 2016 and flagged to Mr. Cohen. But Mr. Pecker declined to pay Ms. Daniels after making the two other deals on Mr. Trump’s behalf. “I am not a bank,” Mr. Pecker recalled saying.

Mr. Pecker and the tabloid’s editor, Dylan Howard, connected Mr. Cohen with Ms. Daniels’s lawyer, Keith Davidson, to negotiate a hush-money deal. Near the end of October 2016, and just days before the election, Mr. Cohen wired Ms. Daniels $130,000 from a newly formed entity he had created at First Republic Bank, funded with a home equity line of credit.

Lawyers for Mr. Trump accused Ms. Daniels of being motivated by money and seeking to profit from the alleged encounter. “Not unlike Mr. Trump,” she responded on the stand.

The Damaging Testimony of White House Aides

Among the 20 witnesses called by the prosecution were two close aides to Mr. Trump when he was president: Hope Hicks, a campaign aide who became the White House communications director, and Madeleine Westerhout, who served as the director of Oval Office operations.

Ms. Hicks testified about concerns within Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign about potentially damaging headlines surfacing before the 2016 election. Most memorably, she described the seismic impact the release of the so-called “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump was recorded bragging about grabbing women’s genitals, had on his campaign.

As soon as the tape was disclosed in October 2016, Ms. Hicks said, she knew it would be “a massive story.” A few weeks later, Mr. Cohen, particularly concerned about the effect the revelations would have on female voters, negotiated a hush-money deal with Ms. Daniels.

Ms. Hicks described Mr. Trump as a micromanager and acknowledged that it seemed unbelievable that Mr. Cohen would pay hush money to Ms. Daniels on his own accord, and without Mr. Trump’s buy-in.

Ms. Westerhout described her involvement in setting up a key meeting between Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump in the Oval Office in February 2017. It was after that meeting that Mr. Trump started to reimburse Mr. Cohen for his payoff to Ms. Daniels. The associated checks, invoices and ledger entries, which were disguised as routine legal expenses, are the documents that spurred the charges.

Once Mr. Trump’s Lawyer, Now the Prosecution’s Star Witness

Mr. Cohen took the stand as the final witness called by the prosecution. He confirmed many details provided by Mr. Pecker and others about the broad scheme to help Mr. Trump’s campaign and hurt his political rivals. And he spoke about the rush to silence Ms. Daniels just before voters went to the polls.

Mr. Cohen said that Mr. Trump made it clear to him in late October 2016, just before the election, that he wanted Ms. Daniels to be paid off. “He expressed to me, ‘Just do it,’” Mr. Cohen said.

He also described a conversation with Mr. Trump and Allen Weisselberg, then the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, in which he said Mr. Trump was apprised of the plan for Mr. Cohen to pay Ms. Daniels and then be repaid.

The checks started to flow to Mr. Cohen in early 2017 and continued throughout the year, eventually totaling $420,000. The total accounted for reimbursem*nt of the hush money, other debts and tax concerns.

“Once I received the money back from Mr. Trump, I would deposit it and no one would be the wiser,” Mr. Cohen testified.

Lawyers for Mr. Trump focused their defense on attacking Mr. Cohen’s credibility, portraying him as a serial liar bent on taking down the former president. But the 12 jurors found his testimony credible and convicted Mr. Trump after 10 hours of deliberations.

Johnson says the Supreme Court should step in to overturn Trump’s conviction.

Mr. Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records after a Manhattan jury considered allegations that he participated in a scheme to pay hush money to a p*rn star to cover up an affair before the 2016 presidential election.

Speaking on Fox, Mr. Johnson said he knew some of the justices on the Supreme Court personally and believed that they shared his view that Mr. Trump was a victim of unfair and politically motivated prosecutions. He also suggested that the legal system was biased against Mr. Trump and other conservatives.

“So I think they’ll set this straight,” Mr. Johnson said, “but it’s going to take a while.”

He added later: “I think this court will do the right thing, because they see the abuse of the system right now.”

Mr. Johnson has long been a steadfast supporter of Mr. Trump. After Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election, Mr. Johnson played a leading role in recruiting House Republicans to sign a legal brief supporting a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results.

The Supreme Court ultimately rejected the suit, but not before Mr. Johnson persuaded more than 60 percent of House Republicans to sign onto the effort. He did so by telling them that the initiative had been personally blessed by Mr. Trump, and that the former president was “anxiously awaiting” to see who in Congress would defend him.

Since becoming speaker, Mr. Johnson has traveled to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, to hold a joint news conference with him. Mr. Johnson also visited him in New York during his criminal trial to show loyalty and support and condemn the proceedings.

In the interview on Fox, Mr. Johnson also boasted about the National Republican Campaign Committee’s fund-raising numbers, which he said were the highest since he won the gavel last fall.

“There’s good reason to be motivated,” Mr. Johnson said of Republican base voters. “This entire thing is absurd.

Looking to capitalize on base outrage about the conviction, Mr. Johnson said House Republicans set up a new website — supportDJT.com — where G.O.P. donors could send them money to help defend Mr. Trump.

“We broke records on our fund-raising platforms last night,” Mr. Johnson said. “We’ll continue to do that.”

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Trump’s declaration that he will appeal sets off a long legal journey.

“We’ll be appealing this scam,” he said at a rambling news conference at Trump Tower in Manhattan. “We’ll be appealing it on many different things. He wouldn’t allow us to have witnesses or have us talk or allow us to do anything. The judge was a tyrant.”

The appeals process is not swift, and could take months or more to resolve, all but ensuring that Mr. Trump will remain a felon when voters head to the polls in November.

Before the appellate process even begins, the former president’s lawyers will likely file a motion to set aside the verdict. The bar for that is high, usually involving newly discovered evidence, evidence of juror misconduct or an egregious error by the judge. Legal experts say such a bid would be highly unlikely to succeed.

Then, on July 11, the judge who oversaw the trial will issue Mr. Trump’s punishment. He could sentence Mr. Trump up to four years in prison or impose only probation.

The sentencing, whatever it might be, will trigger Mr. Trump’s long and winding appeals process, starting a 30-day clock for him to file a notice of appeal.

That notice is just a legal stake in the ground. Mr. Trump will then mount his actual appeal, which could proceed on either of two tracks, depending on the sentence he receives.

If he receives prison or jail time, Mr. Trump will likely be released on bail pending the appeal, and his lawyers would have 120 days to file their brief with New York State’s Appellate Division, First Department. If his sentence is probation, his lawyers have six months to file with the court, a deadline that is often extended.

The next step is for the prosecution to respond, which likely would happen several months later.

Once the case is finally in the First Department’s hands, a decision could still take months to emerge. Given the length of the trial — and thus the length of the transcript to be reviewed — the panel of five appellate court judges likely would not hear arguments until next year, and might not issue a decision until late 2025 or even early 2026.

And those judges won’t necessarily have the final say.

If the Appellate Division upholds the conviction, Mr. Trump can seek leave to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. If the conviction is overturned, the office of the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, can also seek to take the case to the Court of Appeals.

Mr. Trump might also have a final option: the United States Supreme Court.

That would be a long shot, legal experts said. But in an appearance on Fox News on Friday, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, argued that the nation’s highest court should take up Mr. Trump’s cause.

“I think that the justices on the court, I know many of them personally, I think they’re deeply concerned,” said Mr. Johnson, a Trump ally. “I think they’ll set this straight, but it’s going to take a while.”

In the wake of the verdict, Mr. Trump appeared to grasp the daunting journey ahead. On Thursday, moments after his conviction, he said somberly: “This is long from over.”