On the docket: How voters are reacting to Trump’s felony conviction
We’re starting to get glimpses of how Trump’s felony conviction is landing with voters – and it’s moderately good news for President Joe Biden.
A trio of polls conducted since Trump’s conviction show that a narrow majority of Americans approve of the guilty verdict. While the polls haven’t swung dramatically, there’s been a slight uptick in support for Biden in head-to-head surveys.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll found that half of Americans believe Trump’s guilty verdict was correct. A Morning Consult survey found a similar result: 54% of registered voters approve of the conviction, and Biden held a one-point lead over Trump, after trailing him by two in a late May survey from the pollster. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 10% percent of registered Republicans were less likely to vote for Trump after the guilty verdict, and a quarter of independents said the same; Biden had a two-point lead in the survey.
Swing-state voters in Wisconsin and Georgia had mixed reactions to the verdict in conversations with the Guardian’s Alice Herman and George Chidi.
But it’s still very early to assess what kind of impact Trump’s guilty verdict will have in November.
A lot could be shaped by how Trump and Biden talk about the outcome. Trump held a long, rambling press event on Friday to attack the result where he called the US a “fascist state”. On Monday, Trump demanded that the US supreme court step in and overturn his guilty verdict. Republicans rallied around him with over-the-top accusations of a rigged judicial system: House Speaker Mike Johnson called the result “the weaponization of our justice system”, while senator Marco Rubio, a vice-presidential hopeful, called it a “show trial” like what happens in communist Cuba.
Biden’s immediate reaction to the verdict was cautious. At first, his comment was a tepid “no one is above the law”, though he blasted Trump’s attacks on the trial as “reckless” and “dangerous”. On Monday night, Biden ramped up his rhetoric. “For the first time in American history, a former president that is a convicted felon is now seeking the office of the presidency,” Biden said at a private fundraising event. “But as disturbing as that is, more damaging is the all-out assault Donald Trump is making on the American system of justice.”
The verdict has been a boon to the Trump campaign’s previously meager fundraising.
Trump’s campaign and the Republican party said on Friday that they raised a combined $52.8m in the first 24 hours after the verdict came in, fueling a $141m haul in May. That total will not be confirmed until their next FEC filing in a few weeks, but that’s a huge sum – it’s the same amount that Biden and the Democratic party raised in March and April combined.
Will this matter?
The Guardian’s Sam Levine writes that Trump’s guilty verdict is a “full-blown victory” for Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who had faced criticism “for using a novel legal strategy to bring a historic criminal case against a former president”.
The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland argues in an opinion piece that the verdict is a “lifeline” for Biden to turn things around, saying: “You could see something else last night written on the faces of Trump and his advisers. They knew that the 12 jurors in courtroom 1530 had just handed a lifeline to Joe Biden – at a moment when Biden could scarcely need it more.”
Sidebar: Florida, man
Judge Aileen Cannon is at it again.
Last week, the Trump-appointed judge denied a request from special counsel Jack Smith to bar Trump from making incendiary claims about the FBI agents who searched his home, claiming that Smith hadn’t properly consulted with Trump’s lawyers before making the request.
Smith filed the request again on Friday. On Sunday, Cannon ordered Trump’s attorneys to respond – but gave them until 14 June to do so. That’s not exactly speedy given that Smith wants the gag order instituted to keep Trump from stirring up threats against the agents.
This was all spurred by Trump falsely suggesting that “Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE” in a Truth Social post, basing that misleading claim on a recently unsealed FBI document in his criminal classified documents case that included a standard explanation of agency policy related to the FBI’s raid on his Florida home.
Cronies & casualties
On Tuesday, former Trump aides Kenneth Chesebro, Jim Troupis and Michael Roman were charged with felony forgery by Wisconsin Democratic attorney general Josh Kaul, the latest state-level charges against Trump allies for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
Chesebro was the architect of the fake-elector plan and has already pleaded guilty to a similar charge in Georgia; Roman helped him nationalize the plan and is already facing charges in Georgia and Arizona. These are the first charges against Troupis, a retired state judge.
Roman and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows are scheduled to be arraigned in Arizona court on Friday.
In other news
• In Georgia, an appeals court tentatively scheduled 4 October for oral arguments on the appeal from Trump’s team’s seeking to have Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis removed from her case – the latest sign of how long that case is likely to drag on and how unlikely it is that it will conclude before the November election.
• ProPublica found that nine witnesses in Trump’s criminal trials have received significant financial benefits from his businesses and campaign.
