The Republican presidential candidate faced 34 charges of falsifying accounting documents

The former US president has been found guilty on all counts in his trial for concealed payments to a porn star during the 2016 presidential campaign. He denounced a conspiracy orchestrated by the Biden administration.

‘A rigged trial by a corrupt judge’, ‘a disgrace’. On Thursday 30 May, Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of accounting falsifications related to payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in 2016. It was a historic decision, unprecedented for a US president, which Trump immediately criticised as he left the courtroom.

‘The real verdict will be on November 5’ ‘It was a shameful, rigged trial. The real verdict will be on 5 November (the date of the US presidential election). They know what happened here, everyone knows. We’ve done nothing wrong, I’m innocent. I’m fighting for my country, for the Constitution”, he declared in a corridor of the New York courthouse after the guilty verdict on all counts.

True to his usual rhetoric, Donald Trump accused his successor Joe Biden of being behind the verdict:

‘This was done by the Biden administration to harm a political opponent’. ‘We will continue to fight until the end’, he promised. Shortly after the verdict was announced, the White House, through its spokesperson, said it would ‘respect the law’ without further comment. Joe Biden’s campaign team asserted that ‘no one is above the law’.

Found guilty on all 34 counts After two days of deliberations, the 12 jurors unanimously found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying accounting records to conceal a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels to avoid a sex scandal at the end of his 2016 presidential campaign.

‘You have given this case the attention it deserved,’ a shaky-voiced Judge Juan Merchan, whom Donald Trump has described as ‘corrupt’ throughout the trial, told the jurors.

Sentencing to take place on 11 July

Theoretically, Donald Trump could face up to four years in prison, with the possibility of a fine. But the judge could also impose a suspended sentence or even community service.

This verdict does not prevent the 77-year-old Republican billionaire from running for president in November against Democrat Joe Biden, even if he is sentenced to a prison term.

With five months to go before the election, it is difficult to predict what impact this decision will have on the vote, especially as Trump is expected to appeal.

According to several polls, a proportion of voters in favour of Donald Trump may now abandon their decision to vote for him. This is the first time that a former US president has been convicted by the criminal justice system.

But since 2023, his indictments in four separate criminal cases and three civil convictions – legal troubles he describes as a ‘witch hunt’ orchestrated by the Democratic establishment – have not prevented him from winning his party’s primary by a wide margin.

He faces three other criminal cases

The billionaire could face three other trials before the presidential election on 5 November. In Florida, he is accused of keeping classified White House documents at his personal home, but the start of the hearings has been postponed by the judge. In Georgia, he is charged with attempting to manipulate the results of the 2020 presidential election in that southern state, although a trial date has not yet been set.

Donald Trump has also been charged in federal court with ‘conspiracy against America’. In this case, he is accused of seeking to overturn the results of the presidential election by ‘spreading lies about electoral fraud’. According to special prosecutor Jack Smith, this prompted Trump supporters to storm the Capitol on 6 January 2021. This trial depends on the Supreme Court’s decision on Donald Trump’s immunity, expected by the end of June.