Donald Trump has called on the US supreme court to step in and annul his guilty verdict in a hush-money trial that left him with the unwanted distinction of being the first former US president to be a convicted felon.
The 2024 presumptive Republican nominee made his plea in a typically florid post on his Truth Social site, highlighting that a sentencing hearing scheduled for 11 July falls just four days before the GOP’s national convention in Milwaukee, when his nomination is expected to become official.
“The ‘Sentencing’ for not having done anything wrong will be, conveniently for the Fascists, 4 days before the Republican National Convention,” Trump wrote. “A Radical Left Soros backed D.A., who ran on a platform of ‘I will get Trump,’ reporting to an ‘Acting’ Local Judge, appointed by the Democrats, who is HIGHLY CONFLICTED, will make a decision which will determine the future of our Nation?”
A jury in Manhattan found the ex-president guilty last Thursday on all 34 counts of falsifying documents to conceal a sexual liaison with an adult film actor, Stormy Daniels, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won over Hillary Clinton.
The verdict, which Trump has pledged to appeal, raised the atmosphere in this year’s presidential campaign to fever pitch more than five months before polling day, with Republicans circling the wagons while Democrats sought ways to exploit it.
In a worrying sign for Trump, a new ABC/Ipsos poll showed 50% of voters thought the verdict was correct, nearly double the proportion, 27%, who believed it was wrong. Nearly half of those polled, 49%, thought he should end his campaign – a step he is highly unlikely to take.
The figures were even starker among “double haters” – voters who equally dislike Trump and President Joe Biden – 65% of whom supported the verdict, with two-thirds saying the former president should end his campaign. Pollsters predict the cohort could be a critical component of the swing voter constituency they believe will determine the outcome in November.
By appealing to the supreme court to intervene in a case he insists is nakedly political, Trump is reprising the legal strategy deployed in his defense against special counsel Jack Smith’s charges relating to the 6 January, 2021 mob attack on the US Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in his favor.
The case is currently on hold while the nine justices consider claims by Trump’s lawyers that he had complete immunity from prosecution for decisions taken while he was president.
But his invocation of the court – which has a six-to-three conservative majority after Trump’s judicial appointments while he was in the White House – also comes as questions over its political impartiality are at a peak following revelations that a US flag was flown upside down at the home of Justice Samuel Alito at the time of the January 6 riot. The gesture is identical to that used by many participants in the attack as a symbol of protest against Biden’s victory.
In an interview with Fox, Trump affected to be unfazed by the possibility that he could be sentenced to jail by Judge Juan Merchan at his 11 July hearing, saying: “it could happen” and that he would be “OK” with a custodial sentence or home confinement.
Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who prosecuted Trump’s case, has reportedly yet to decide whether to request a prison term or leave the decision to Merchan’s discretion.
Legal analysts have pointed out that his conviction is for a low-level felony and that Trump has no prior convictions, making probation a more likely sentence.
But the ex-president may have sullied his prospects of remaining free with his relentless verbal assaults on both men.
Previous attacks on Bragg, a Democrat, have included posting a picture of himself holding a baseball bat next to a photo of the prosecutor’s head.
The first Republican attack ad aiming to exploit the verdict has been posted by the GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy in his campaign against a Democratic incumbent, Jon Tester, in which he links his opponent for a Montana seat to a prosecution that the ad calls “a state-sponsored political persecution led by JOE BIDEN and the radical left”.
“They want to throw Trump in jail, trying to rob Americans of their choice in the election,” the 30-second broadcast says.
It also accuses Tester of advocating political violence against Trump, displaying footage of the senator saying: “I think you need to go back and punch him in the face.”
