BREAKING: Trump's donation site crashes due to surging traffic

Trump, who remains free without bail, faces a maximum possible sentence of four years in prison for each count.

HOW CAN TRUMP BE PRESIDENT DESPITE THE CONVICTION?
The U.S. Constitution only requires that presidents be at least 35 years old and U.S. citizens who have lived in the country for 14 years.
Neither a criminal conviction nor a prison sentence would affect Trump's eligibility or his ability to become president. In theory, he could be sworn in from jail or prison if he were to unseat Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election.
Jailhouse presidential campaigns are not unprecedented in U.S. history. Socialist Eugene Debs unsuccessfully ran for president from prison in the 1920 election, though unlike Trump he was not a serious contender.

If we have learned anything about Trump, it is that, beneath all the insult-comic improvisations, he means what he says. His authoritarian entertainments are authoritarian intentions. Where he has had the power and the discipline to enact his intentions, he has done so. He set out to appoint Justices to the Supreme Court to eliminate abortion rights, and he did so. He set out to erase the line between fact and lies, and did so. He set out to call into question the efficacy of elections and, for millions of people, he succeeded. He set out to deepen the divides in an already fractured nation and, by every measure, he has succeeded—to his benefit.

In short, an understanding of what a second Trump term would mean for all Americans hardly depends on the verdict in the matter of the People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump. American democracy, any democracy, is by nature fragile, and even the most summary assessment of Trump’s rhetoric, actions, and intentions makes clear that the election in November is a matter of emergency. To return an unstable and malevolent authoritarian to the White House risks wounding American democracy in ways that would likely take decades to repair. That is not the only issue on the ballot, but those are the stakes

Trump allies react to guilty verdict
 
Allies of Donald Trump quickly took to social media showing support for the former president following his guilty verdict.  
 
House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, who is reportedly on Trump’s vice president short list, said the verdict “shows how corrupt and rigged the American system has become under Joe Biden.”
 
    “From the start, the scales of justice were stacked against President Trump,” Stefanik wrote in a statement. “We must redouble our efforts and work around the clock to ensure President Trump is victorious this November to save America from Biden’s failed Far Left Democrat agenda.”  
 
Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green posted a photo on X of an upside down American flag – a symbol of the “Stop the Steal” campaign and the January 6 insurrection.  

Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise called the verdict “Corrupt, partisan, vicious."

    “I won’t stand by while the leader of our party is ambushed by our own government,” Scalise said, sharing a fundraiser link.  
 
Similarly, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called the hush money trial “a sham" on X.
 
    This was a sham show trial. The Kangaroo Court will never stand on appeal.

    Americans deserve better than a sitting U.S. President weaponizing our justice system against a political opponent— all to win an election.
 
    We must FIRE Joe Biden in November.
    — Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) May 30, 2024
 

Mike Johnson called the guilty verdict against former President Donald Trump “a shameful day in American history.”
 
Johnson also accused the justice system of being weaponized and described the trial as “a purely political exercise, not a legal one."

"In the case of the People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, a jury in Manhattan of five women and seven men found the defendant guilty on Thursday on thirty-four counts of falsifying business records in the first-degree.

The conviction on these felony charges is only the most recent stain on the legal history of the former President. Last year, in a civil trial, another New York jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, and awarded the victim of that assault, the advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, five million dollars. A subsequent suit against Trump for defaming Carroll resulted in an additional award of more than eighty-three million dollars in damages. Trump awaits three more trials—in Washington, D.C., Florida, and Georgia—in which he faces myriad indictments for helping to foment the violent uprising at the U.S. Capitol; criminally mishandling classified documents; and taking part in a conspiracy to “unlawfully change the outcome” of the 2020 election. He has further distinguished himself in the annals of American law by being the only President to be impeached twice—the first time for trying to extort the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, the second for “incitement of insurrection.”

Following the devastating judgment against Trump in Manhattan Criminal Court, voters will now decide to what extent they care. The question is whether any who remain undecided—particularly in the most critical precincts of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona—will be convinced that a felony conviction disqualifies Trump from a second term as Commander-in-Chief, or whether this most recent badge of dishonor is, in the end, of no greater concern than his well-documented history as a bigot, a fabulist, and an authoritarian intent on pursuing a second term inflamed by a spirit of vengeance.
The vast majority of the electorate is, to one degree or another, quite aware of his many characteristics. He has been around a long time. He is aggressively transparent, supremely frank about his furies and his prejudices. He appears to be devoid of shame. Rather than betray regret about a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress with whom he allegedly enjoyed a brief interlude, or even issue denials under oath, Trump, in his many press conferences outside the courtroom at 100 Centre Street, exploited the trial as a means of illustrating the ongoing narrative of his persecution at the hands of the Biden Administration and the Deep State. His victimhood, he has told his supporters, is your victimhood. I am you. My retribution will be your retribution. As the trial wore on, he managed to monetize this tall tale. His fund-raising increased, particularly among smaller donors. Such is his talent for self-pity and demagoguery. His continuing legal jeopardy, according to Politico, “may be the most effective tool he has going.”

Trump’s personal adventures and interesting accounting practices appear to have given little pause to even the most self-righteous of G.O.P. leaders. Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, has called the Bible the bedrock of his “personal world view,” and yet, in the wake of the allegations provided by Daniels, Trump’s former consigliere Michael Cohen, and other witnesses, he still visited the Centre Street courthouse to show his treacly obeisance to Trump and to denounce the proceedings as a “sham.”
The picture is no different among Trump’s former Republican rivals. Early critics, such as Senators Marco Rubio, of Florida, and J. D. Vance, of Ohio, are now puppy-eager supporters vying for the Vice-Presidency or a Cabinet position; more persistent naysayers, such as Governor Chris Sununu, of New Hampshire, have also fallen into line. Trump’s last real opponent in the Republican primary, his former envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, spent months attacking his character (“Every single thing Donald Trump has said or put on TV has been a lie”) and his mental stability (“He is unhinged. He is more diminished than he was”). She blamed him for the Party’s losses in 2018, 2020, and 2022, and declared that she, at least, was brave enough to say so: “Of course, many of the same politicians who now publicly embrace Trump privately dread him. They know what a disaster he’s been and will continue to be for our party. They’re just too afraid to say it out loud. Well, I’m not afraid to say the hard truths out loud.” And yet, as the trial entered its last days, Haley, predictably, crumbled, saying out loud that she would cast her vote for Trump and, implicitly, her integrity to the four winds. In return, Trump tossed Haley a crumb, suggesting vaguely that she might yet gain a place on his team “in some form.”

Some of the titans of Wall Street are showing similar degrees of moral flexibility. Stephen Schwarzman, a billionaire financier who abandoned Trump not because of the insurrection, in 2021, but after the G.O.P.’s poor showing in the 2022 midterm elections, has now returned meekly to the fold. His reasons, he said obscurely, include a variety of policy concerns and “the dramatic rise of antisemitism.” (Trump, who has a long history of antisemitic statements, said earlier this year that “any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion.”) The hedge-fund manager Kenneth Griffin has similarly overcome his doubts. He once called Trump a “three-time loser”; now he is back on board.

Like so many authoritarians of the past—and, more recently, like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, and Jair Bolsonaro—Trump deploys a blood-and-soil rhetoric in which his supporters and the existing order are under dire threat. The United States is a “failing nation” hurtling toward catastrophe. The government and the media may say (accurately) that inflation has trended downward and that the unemployment rate is below four per cent, but Trump darkly forecasts a nightmare world of Chinese dominance and a “1929-type Depression.” Moreover, if Joe Biden is reëlected, the country will continue to become “a Third World hellhole ruled by censors, perverts, criminals, and thugs.” The 2024 election is “the final battle,” and only he can redeem us from a “Mad Max” dystopia—or, as he put it at a conference in Maryland last March, a “lawless, open-borders, crime-ridden, filthy, communist nightmare.”"

"Would America buy a n— winning?” Trump is alleged to have asked his team in the final rounds of the reality show's opening season. With multiple Black candidates still remaining in the final round, the businessman was apparently worried about the optics of allowing a minority to win.

Judge denies Trump attorney's request for acquittal
 
Trump attorney Todd Blanche moves for an acquittal of the charges, not withstanding the verdict.
 
Blanche says there's no way the jury could've reached the verdict without the testimony of Michael Cohen, and that the defense believes Cohen committed perjury at this trial.

Judge Juan Merchan denies the acquittal motion.
 

Trump donation portal appears to be down
 
From CNN's Donie O'Sullivan
 
The online portal the Trump campaign uses to accept donations, winred.com, appears to be offline.  
 
The Trump campaign tweeted, “So many Americans were moved to donate to President Trump's campaign that the WinRed pages went down.”
 
“We are working on getting the website back online as quickly as possible.”
 
While the winred.com homepage appeared to be functioning normally, an error message appeared on the site when CNN attempted to click the “donate” button next to former President Donald Trump’s name.

BREAKING: DONALD TRUMP TO HOLD A PRESS CONFERENCE TOMORROW MORNING AT 11:00 A.M. AT TRUMP TOWER