Donald Trump’s conviction on all 34 felony counts on Thursday marked a full-blown victory for Alvin Bragg, the first-term Manhattan district attorney who was criticized for using a novel legal strategy to bring a historic criminal case against a former president.
The decision to convict Trump on all 34 counts is significant. Jurors could have acquitted him on some and convicted on others. But the fact that they went all-in, and relatively quickly, suggests they believed the wider story prosecutors told at trial. It is a full-throated win for Bragg and the worst possible outcome for Trump.
Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor in New York state. In order to elevate it to a felony, Bragg had to show that Trump did it with the intent to commit another crime. Bragg argued that Trump had falsified the records with the intent to violate a New York state law that says it is illegal for “any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means”.
The statute has rarely been used to prosecute. The prosecutors offered a range of what the “unlawful means” were, including violating campaign finance and tax laws. Some legal observers said Bragg was stretching to bring the case. A little over a month ago, one law professor called the case a “historic mistake”.
But over the last several weeks, prosecutors transformed a complex legal case into a carefully constructed narrative that was easy for jurors to understand. They took a case that was fundamentally about boring paper crimes and turned it into one that was about something simple: lying.
At every step, prosecutors were focused on keeping jurors attention on their bigger picture. Their first witness, former American Media chief executive David Pecker, led them into the jaw-droppingly seedy world of tabloid journalism, laying out how he would pay for stories and then not publish them for the benefit of friends like Trump. It established the world that Trump operated in and showed the lengths he was willing to go to in order to keep bad stories from coming to light.
Pecker also delivered one of the most devastating moments in the trial against Trump. After several days of revealing how he bought and killed stories on behalf of Trump, he ended his testimony by saying how much he continued to admire Trump. It was a critical moment that showed how loyal those around Trump are, and severely undercut Trump’s claim that everyone was out to get him.
Pecker also established a critical link between Trump and his fixer Michael Cohen, telling jurors, in a memorable line, that “every time we went out for lunch I always paid. He [Cohen] never paid. I didn’t think he had authorization to pay without Trump’s approval.”
Prosecutors constructed their case carefully, sprinkling in the duller but necessary information – bank records, checks and invoices – in between scintillating testimony. Even though those documents were the key pieces of evidence of Trump’s crimes, prosecutors made sure the jurors knew how they fit into the larger piece of the puzzle.
Stormy Daniels was a key witness who helped the prosecutors do this. Even though the payment to her was not illegal, and even though she never spoke to Michael Cohen ahead of the 2016 election, her sparkling and, at times, lurid testimony helped raise the stakes for the jury. By giving the dramatic details of her affair with Trump – from whether he wore a condom to the sex position they used – she reminded jurors of why Trump would want to go to such lengths to conceal the story.
Prosecutors also masterfully set up Cohen’s testimony for the jury. Cohen, a former Trump fixer, was a problematic witness for the prosecution because of his prior convictions for perjury and his known penchant for lying. Cohen himself admitted on the stand that he was “obsessed” with Trump.
But from the beginning of the trial, prosecutors prepared jurors to brace themselves for Cohen. Pecker and Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, corroborated much of what Cohen would later say on the stand. The fact that Cohen was merely confirming what two witnesses before him had said made him seem more credible.
Pecker and Davidson also both testified extensively about what a jerk Cohen was, portraying him as someone who would do anything for Trump – and who was also extremely annoying. And they made no effort to conceal why Cohen would be upset with Trump. After Trump failed to take Cohen to Washington, Davidson testified that he thought Cohen was going to kill himself.
So when Trump’s lawyers tried to do everything they could to attack Cohen’s credibility, it fell flat.
While prosecutors took pains to tell a precise story, Trump’s team did not make a concerted effort to tell a counter-narrative. They sought to undermine the credibility of witnesses, specifically Daniels and Cohen, but many of the details they testified about were corroborated by others. They barely put on a defense case. Instead, it seemed they were hoping they could generate at least enough doubt for one juror to vote against a conviction, triggering a mistrial.
That appears to have been a severe miscalculation. In the end, it took only 12 hours for the jury of 12 Manhattanites to reach their unanimous verdict of guilty on all 34 counts.
