Former president Donald Trump struck a defiant tone in a rambling speech delivered just one day after his historic felony conviction, saying that he’s “very honored” to be the defendant in a criminal case that he sees as a partisan political attack on himself and his supporters.
A Manhattan jury on Thursday convicted Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sexual encounter with porn actress Stormy Daniels, making the presumptive Republican nominee the first former U.S. president to be found guilty of a crime.
“I’m honored in a way,” he said during a press conference inside Trump Tower on Friday. “It’s not that it’s pleasant. It’s very bad for family, it’s very bad for friends and businesses. But I’m honored to be involved in it because somebody has to do it. And I might as well keep going and be the one.”
Trump claimed his reelection campaign raised a total of $39 million in about ten hours after his conviction. Earlier Friday, Trump’s campaign announced it had raised about $34.8 million from small-dollar donors following the verdict. The high amount of traffic caused the campaign’s donation page to crash.
“President Trump and our campaign are immensely grateful from this outpouring of support from patriots across our country,” said Trump campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. “President Trump is fighting to save our nation and November 5th is the day Americans will deliver the real verdict.”
During the speech, Trump attributed the gag order in the hush-money case to President Joe Biden and the Department of Justice, who he claimed were working in “total conjunction” with the court.
Pivoting back into campaign mode after weeks spent inside a Manhattan courtroom, Trump began bashing President Biden as corrupt and incompetent.
“It all comes out of the White House. The worst president in the history of our country,” Trump said of his 2024 presidential election opponent. “He’s the dumbest president we’ve ever had.”
Confirming a statement made by his defense lawyer Todd Blanche Thursday night, Trump vowed to appeal the guilty verdict in his address on Friday. The appeals process will likely begin after Trump is sentenced on July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention, and could take a year or more to wind its way through the New York state and, ultimately, federal judicial system.
“Given the unprecedented nature of this situation, I think it’s probably likely that if the case actually made it through the entire New York appellate process and wasn’t reversed, the former president would probably want his case appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, told National Review.
Trump faces up to four years in prison, though legal experts who previously spoke with National Review agreed that, as a first-time, non-violent offender, he will more likely be sentenced to probation.
Eisen also concurred, saying it’s “unlikely” Trump will be sentenced to prison but noted it’s “still entirely possible.” Still, she said that “we need to respect the verdict,” as she believes the jury deliberations in the case were transparent and based on facts: “No person — not even a former president — is above the law.”
Despite the guilty verdict, Trump can still return to the White House, as the U.S. Constitution does not bar presidential candidates from running for office if they are convicted of a crime. The Constitution’s only requirements for federal office are: The president must be at least 35 years old, must be a natural-born U.S. citizen, and must have lived in the country for at least 14 years.
Notably, Trump is not the first convicted felon to run for office. Eugene V. Debs ran for president on the Socialist Party ticket in 1920, while in prison for violating the Sedition Act of 1918 by speaking out against American involvement in World War I. Debs, who was serving a ten-year sentence at the time, captured three percent of the vote.