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NEW YORK — The morning after Donald Trump was convicted in a Manhattan criminal court of 34 felonies, the former president relitigated details of the trial, revived old grievances and charged ahead with his presidential campaign.
In a rambling, 33-minute news conference inside Trump Tower, the former president repeated many of the complaints and accusations that he had throughout the trial — that the case “was very unfair,” that the “devil” judge was conflicted and that the district attorney was ignoring crime in New York.
“It’s my honor to be doing this, but it’s a really unpleasant thing, to be honest,” Trump said. “But it’s a great honor.”
Trump was back in his element — in the atrium of his own Midtown skyscraper — away from the dingy courtroom where he sat for days on end over the last six weeks. But he was clearly somewhat worn down from the trial, seeming exasperated as he went on and on about the unfairness of the case against him while touting his own polling lead and fundraising numbers.
Before a backdrop of a brown glossy stone wall, gold elevator bays and American flags, and with a gift shop selling Trump-branded merchandise just out of frame, Trump freewheeled his remarks, complaining about President Joe Biden’s policies on gas-powered cars, opining on the definition of a “legal expense” and non-disclosure agreements, bemoaning the effects of illegal immigration and more.
Reporters and camera operators stood behind a barrier of brass and red velvet ropes, an only-in-2024 contrast to the metal barricades that had separated Trump in recent weeks from courthouse hallway scrums in downtown Manhattan.
The venue — not his building at 40 Wall Street, where Trump has often addressed the media, but “Trump Tower atrium,” as Trump specified when he announced the news conference on social media — was a throwback to his 2016 campaign launch. And for all that has transpired since then, including this week’s verdict, it remains unclear exactly how the political landscape will shift, even as he now has overwhelming public support from GOP officials across the spectrum, most of whom rushed to slam the verdict moments after it was issued.
Donations to Trump’s campaign poured in after the verdict, his team reported, saying $34.8 million of small-dollar donations had come in since Thursday. (Trump repeatedly cited the figure as “$39 million” during the press event.) Just shy of 30 percent of those who gave were “brand new donors to the WinRed platform,” his advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said in a statement.
Trump and his campaign team responded forcefully following the verdict, and not only slamming the judge and prosecution in the case, as he had done for months. His advisers also went after the few Republicans they felt hadn’t sufficiently defended Trump — as well as those fundraising off the verdict, which LaCivita said amounted to “siphoning money from President Trump’s donors.”
After a six-week trial in Manhattan criminal court, Trump was found guilty by a jury of all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
Polling showed that the case, likely the only of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial before the November election, was seen as weaker than the others, which pertain to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and his taking of classified documents upon leaving the White House.
