The Biden campaign said former President Donald Trump’s historic felony conviction Thursday shows “no one is above the law,” but reminded voters it won’t stop Trump from running for president, in a rare statement just minutes after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump exits the courtroom after he . [+] was convicted in his criminal trial at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, on May 30, 2024. A New York jury convicted Donald Trump on all charges in his hush money case on May 30, 2024 in a seismic development barely five months ahead of the election where he seeks to recapture the White House. (Photo by MICHAEL M. SANTIAGO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Biden posted a fundraising appeal to his X account shortly after his campaign released a statement, writing “there’s only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: At the ballot box,” with a link to donate to the campaign.
Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler reiterated that Trump, “convicted felon or not . . . will be the Republican nominee for president,” he said in a statement, adding “the threat Trump poses to our democracy has never been greater.”
The White House declined to weigh in on the verdict, telling reporters via White House Counsel spokesperson Ian Sams “we respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment.”
Biden and his campaign have made few comments on Trump’s legal woes in an apparent effort to avoid bolstering Trump’s unfounded claims that the Manhattan case and his three federal cases were brought to help Biden’s chances of winning the election.
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Trump, speaking outside the courtroom after the verdict was read, slammed the jury’s decision as “rigged” and an effort by the “Biden administration” to “hurt a political opponent.” Trump’s campaign said it was flooded with so many small-dollar donations after the verdict that his WinRed fundraising page was temporarily disabled.
The 12-person jury found Trump guilty Thursday of 34 counts of falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election. The case centered on $130,000 Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid adult film star Stormy Daniels on Trump’s behalf in the lead-up to the 2016 election to silence her allegations of a 2006 affair with Trump. The jury found that Trump not only fraudulently labeled reimbursements to Cohen as legal expenses, but that he did so in an effort to illegally sway the outcome of an election, a secondary crime prosecutors were required to prove Trump intended to commit in order to elevate the falsifying business records charges from misdemeanors to felonies.
Trump’s lawyers asked the judge to schedule his sentencing for July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention, when Trump is set to formally be nominated by the GOP.
Trump can still run and be elected president despite the felony convictions, as the Constitution only requires presidents to be at least 35 years old and natural-born U.S. citizens who have lived in the country for at least 14 years. If Trump is elected, then sentenced to prison—an unlikely outcome given his status as a first-time offender and the nature of the charges, according to legal experts—his cabinet and the vice president could declare him unable to fulfill his duties and transfer authority to the vice president.
In perhaps its most direct acknowledgement of Trump’s criminal cases, the campaign held a press conference with surrogates, including actor Robert De Niro, outside of Manhattan criminal court as closing arguments began in the case Tuesday.