[What A Day]([link removed])
Monday, May 30, 2024
BY CROOKED MEDIA
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[-Donald Trump]([link removed]) on covering up hush money payments to a porn star before an election, moments before a jury called it a crime.
Disgraced former president Donald Trump just became the convicted felon we always knew he really was, in our hearts.
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[Trump was found guilty]([link removed]) on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records by a jury of 12 average citizens in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday. That makes him not just the first former president ever charged with crimes, but now the first actual criminal. Prosecutors proved Trump broke the law by attempting to hide $130,000 in hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who claims she slept with Trump. The details of the case involved tawdry tales of sex and cash, a billionaire, and a porn star. But prosecutors cast the scheme as an attempt to steal the 2016 election. Trump’s team rushed to silence Stormy in the days before the vote over fears her story would cost him the presidency. In the end, the jury agreed that Trump broke the law, beyond any reasonable doubt.
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Will Trump go to prison? It’s possible. This is all unprecedented, so no one really knows. Each of the 34 counts carries a possible four-year sentence and a $5,000 fine. Trump will be sentenced by Judge Juan Merchan, who ran this trial, at 10 a.m. on July 11, just four days before the Republican National Convention kicks off and makes Trump the official GOP nominee.
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Normally, the odds would be against prison time for these offenses. But legal experts say this isn’t normal. “Most first-time non-violent offenders do not get jail time,” noted Paul Rosenzweig, a former member of the Ken Starr investigation into Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and an expert on the history of presidential investigations. But Trump’s outrageous conduct during the trial, when he violated his gag order multiple times, might tilt the balance in favor of real prison time, according to Rosenzweig. “If Trump winds up being incarcerated it will almost certainly be a result of his contumacious conduct during trial,” he said. But the judge may simply give Trump house arrest, or community service.
[What A Day]([link removed])
The bigger question is: What will voters think?
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Sizable minorities of Trump’s own supporters have said they’d balk at sending a convicted felon to the White House. Some might change their minds by November, and his biggest fans have repeatedly moved the goalposts for him in the past. In one recent poll, 6 percent of self-identifying Trump voters said a conviction would make them less likely to vote for him, while 68 percent said it would make no difference.
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Another 24 percent of Trump supporters in that same poll said they’d be even MORE likely to vote for him if he’s convicted of a crime, which tells you something about how Trump has warped people’s minds. Eight years ago, Trump thought an affair would ruin his prospects. After the verdict came down, notorious right-winger [Ann Coulter tweeted]([link removed]): “These idiot liberals may have just gotten Trump elected.” The fact that we even have to ask how voters will react is a scary sign of our troubled times. And in the end, it's on the voters, not the prosecutors. No criminal charge can stop Trump from becoming president by itself. He would still legally be allowed to run for president, and win, from a prison cell.
In a tight race, losing 6 percent of Trump’s voters could make all the difference.
All of Crooked wants alllll of you to tune in to the next episode of Inside 2024, with special guest John Legend. The twelve-time Grammy award winner joins zero-time Grammy Award winner Jon Favreau to talk about the pros and cons of celebrity political endorsements. For those of you thinking “We’re just ordinary people / we don’t know which way to go,” we say head on over to [crooked.com/friends]([link removed]) to join Friends of the Pod and watch this exclusive series.
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[The NRA won a unanimous ruling]([link removed]) from the Supreme Court Thursday giving them the go-ahead to pursue a lawsuit against a former New York state official who allegedly tried to have the gun group blacklisted after the deadly Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting in 2018. The justices found that the First Amendment prohibits government officials from “welding their power selectively to punish or suppress speech.” The NRA was repped by the ACLU, which [celebrated the win]([link removed]) for free speech.
[Two more U.S. officials]([link removed]) publicly resigned over the Israel-Hamas war, accusing the Biden administration of being untruthful about Israeli obstruction of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. The two resignations this week bring the total number of Biden administration officials who have publicly stepped down over the US’s handling of Gaza to nine.
[Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) told Semafor]([link removed])that he hopes to pass a sweeping mega-bill of legislation if Republicans can capture the Senate, keep the House, and win the presidency. Johnson said the plans are still being worked through but the bill will revisit Trump’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act, add new border security measures and promote energy production, among other things. Johnson hopes to pass this super bill through reconciliation, bypassing any potential filibuster complications.
[Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts declined a meeting request]([link removed]) from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee about their push to get Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from upcoming cases around January 6th and the 2020 election for flying “Stop the Steal” flags at his homes, just a day after Alito said he was definitely not gonna do that. Roberts argued there’s no precedent for a justice to attend such a meeting. Okay, but, y’know, there’s no precedent for a justice to wave an anti-democracy flag over his beach house, either, is there?
[The Department of Education said Thursday]([link removed]) that it will conduct a “full-scale review” of the Federal Student Aid office, including a shakeup of leadership, after months of delays and errors with this year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as FAFSA.
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[Mexico is on the brink of a historic election]([link removed]) this weekend that will likely seat the country’s first woman president. The two women candidates, Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez are leading the third male candidate Jorge Álvarez Máynez in the race, with Sheinbaum polling as the frontrunner. They're all running campaigns focused on public safety, as murder rates and extortion from armed groups surge throughout the country.
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