Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents as he is helped off the stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa. on July 13, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 14 joined world leaders in condemning the assassination attempt that targeted former U.S. President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. Mr. Trump was addressing a campaign rally at Butler Country when a shooter perched on a nearby rooftop fired several gunshots that left one person dead and several injured.

“Deeply concerned by the attack on my friend, former President Donald Trump. Strongly condemn the incident. Violence has no place in politics and democracies. Wish him speedy recovery. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of the deceased, those injured and the American people,” said Prime Minister Modi.

Condemning the incident, President Joe Biden said, “There is no place for this kind of violence in America.” Former U.S. President Barack Obama also commented on the alarming development that came in the backdrop of a bitter political campaign.

“There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy. Although we don’t yet know exactly what happened, we should all be relieved that former President Trump wasn’t seriously hurt, and use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics,” said President Obama.

Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has also responded to the attack on former President Trump and said, “I’m sickened by the shooting at former President Trump. It cannot be overstated — political violence is never acceptable. My thoughts are with former President Trump, those at the event, and all Americans.”

Meanwhile, U.K.’s newly elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer has condemned the incident saying, “Political violence in any form has no place in our societies, and my thoughts are with all the victims of this attack.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he was “shocked by the apparent attack on President Trump.”

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she was “following with apprehension” updates from Pennsylvania and wished Trump a speedy recovery.

The right-wing leader expressed her hope that “in the following months of the electoral campaign, dialogue and responsibility can prevail over hate and violence.”

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also spoke out against political attacks, saying “We must stand firm against any form of violence that challenges democracy.”

Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te offered his “sincere condolences” to the shooting victims.

“Political violence of any form is never acceptable in our democracies,” he said.

Australia’s Anthony Albanese said he was “shocked by the terrible scenes” at the Trump campaign event, expressing his relief that the former U.S. president was safe.

“This was an inexcusable attack on the democratic values that Australians and Americans share and the freedom that we treasure,” Mr. Albanese said.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Chris Luxon echoed these views, writing “no country should encounter such political violence.”

(With AFP inputs)

Former president Donald Trump was the target of an apparent assassination attempt on July 13 at a Pennsylvania rally, days before he was to accept the Republican nomination for a third time. A barrage of gunfire set off panic, and a bloodied Trump, who said he was shot in the ear, was surrounded by Secret Service and hurried to his SUV as he pumped his fist in a show of defiance.

In the coming days, much of the focus will shift to the shooter and security lapses. The shooter was not an attendee at the rally and was killed by U.S. Secret Service agents, according to two officials who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

The officials said the shooter was engaged by members of the U.S. Secret Service counterassault team. The heavily armed tactical team travels everywhere with the President and major party nominees and is meant to confront any active threats while other agents focus on safeguarding and evacuating the person at the center of protection.

Law enforcement recovered an AR-style rifle at the scene, according to a third person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

An AP analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos from the scene of the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows the shooter was able to get astonishingly close to the stage where the former president was speaking. A video posted to social media and geolocated by the AP shows the body of a person wearing grey camouflage lying motionless on the roof of a building at AGR International Inc., a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds where Trump’s rally was held.

The roof where the person lay was less than 150 metres (164 yards) from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target. For reference, 150 metres is the distance at which U.S. Army recruits must hit a scaled human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M-16 rifle.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose department oversees the Secret Service, said officials were engaged with the Biden and Trump campaigns and “taking every possible measure to ensure their safety and security.”

Trump was showing off a chart of border crossing numbers when the apparent shots began just after 6:10 p.m. It took two minutes from the moment of the first shot for Trump to be placed in a waiting SUV.

As Trump was talking, a popping sound was heard, and the former president put his right hand up to his right ear, as people in the stands behind him appeared to be shocked.

As the first pop rang out, Trump said, “Oh,” and grabbed his ear as two more pops could be heard and he crouched down. More shots were heard then.

Someone could be heard saying near the microphone at Trump’s lectern, “Get down, get down, get down, get down!” as agents tackled the former president. They piled atop him to shield him with their bodies, as is their training protocol, as other agents took up positions on stage to search for the threat.

Screams were heard in the crowd of several thousand people. A woman screamed louder than the rest. Afterward, voices were heard saying “shooter’s down” several times, before someone asked “are we good to move?” and “are we clear?” Then, someone ordered, “Let’s move.”

Trump could be heard on the video saying at least twice, “Let me get my shoes, let me get my shoes,” with another voice heard saying, “I’ve got you sir.”

Trump got to his feet moments later and could be seen reaching with his right hand toward his face. There appeared to be blood on his face. He then pumped his fist in the air and appeared to mouth the word “Fight” twice his crowd of supporters, prompting loud cheers and then chants of “USA. USA. USA.”

The crowd cheered as he got back up and pumped his fist.

His motorcade left the venue moments later. Video showed Trump turning back to the crowd and raising a fist right before he was put into a vehicle.

“Everybody went to their knees or their prone position, because we all knew, everyone becoming aware of the fact this was gunfire,” said Dave McCormick, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, who was sitting to Trump’s right on stage.

As he saw Trump raise his fist, Mr. McCormick said, he looked over his shoulder and noticed someone had been hit while sitting in the bleachers behind the stage.

Eventually, first responders were able to carry the injured person out of a large crowd so he could get medical care, Mr. McCormick said.

Reporters covering the rally heard five or six shots ring out and many ducked for cover, hiding under tables. After the first two or three bangs, people in the crowd looked startled, but not panicked. An AP reporter at the scene reported the noise sounded like firecrackers at first or perhaps a car backfiring.

When it was clear the situation had been contained and that Trump would not be returning to speak, attendees started filing out of the venue. One man in an electric wheelchair got stuck on the field when his chair’s battery died. Others tried to help him move.

Police soon told the people remaining to leave the venue and Secret Service agents told reporters to get “out now. This is a live crime scene.”

Two firefighters from nearby Steubenville, Ohio, who were at the rally told the AP that they helped people who appeared injured and heard bullets hitting broadcast speakers.

“The bullets rattled around the grandstand, one hit the speaker tower and then chaos broke. We hit the ground and then the police converged into the grandstands, said Chris Takach.

“The first thing I heard is a couple of cracks,” Dave Sullivan said.

Mr. Sullivan said he saw one of the speakers get hit and bullets rattling and, “we hit the deck.”

He said once Secret Service and other authorities converged on Trump, he and Mr. Takach assisted two people who may have been shot in the grandstand and cleared a path to get them out of the way.

“Just a sad day for America,” Mr. Sullivan said.

“After we heard the shots got fired, then the hydraulic line was spraying all around, you could see the hydraulic fluid coming out of it. And then the speaker tower started to fall down,” Mr. Sullivan said. “Then we heard another shot that, you could hear, you knew something was, it was bullets. It wasn’t firecrackers.”

The perils of campaigning took on a new urgency after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in California in 1968, and again in 1972 when Arthur Bremer shot and seriously hurt George Wallace, who was running as an independent on a campaign platform that has sometimes been compared to Trump’s. That led to increased protection of candidates, even as the threats persisted, notably against Jesse Jackson in 1988 and Barack Obama in 2008.

Presidents, particularly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, have even greater layers of security. Trump is a rarity as both a former president and a current candidate.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the three men on Trump’s shortlist for vice president, all quickly sent out statements expressing concern for the former president, with Rubio sharing an image taken as Trump was escorted off stage with his fist in the air and a streak of blood on his face along with the words “God protected President Trump.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said in a statement on X that he had been briefed on the situation and Pennsylvania state police were on hand at the rally site.

“Violence targeted at any political party or political leader is absolutely unacceptable. It has no place in Pennsylvania or the United States,” he said.

Cutouts depicting U.S. President Joe Biden and Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump are displayed in a souvenir shop in Washington, U.S.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Donald Trump unleashed a torrent of invective against U.S. President Joe Biden on July 9, mercilessly assailing the embattled Democrat as he faces down calls to end his re-election bid after a disastrous debate performance.

Mr. Trump’s speech in Florida was his first public appearance since the clamour for Mr. Biden’s withdrawal began gaining momentum, and the gloves were emphatically off as the Republican accused Democrats of lying to protect the President.

“It’s the biggest cover up in political history,” Mr. Trump thundered near the start of a 75-minute speech, which focused almost entirely on his 81-year-old election rival.

“As you know, they are all co-conspirators in the sinister plot to defraud the American public about the cognitive abilities of the man in the Oval Office.”

Commentators have noted how Mr. Trump, 78, has appeared relatively restrained in recent days, stepping back from the limelight to allow the full glare of the media to stay on the Democratic leadership crisis.

But he dispensed with any pretence at restraint as he characterised Mr. Biden as a “corrupt, incompetent, cognitively impaired” leader who was barely aware of his own policies or record in office.

In a typically bombastic speech peppered with multiple exaggerations and falsehoods, Mr. Trump accused Mr. Biden of going missing regularly from the Oval Office while his son Hunter, a convicted felon, runs the government aided by First Lady Jill Biden.

Also Read | Trump turns 78, spotlighting age as central issue in 2024 race

For much of the rally at his Doral National golf resort in Miami, Mr. Trump ran through his usual stump speech, characterising America as teetering on the edge of catastrophe and describing a world facing a race against the clock to avert nuclear armageddon.

But there were multiple departures as Mr. Trump skewered Mr. Biden — and kept twisting — over numerous public statements from elected Democrats in recent days questioning his ability to carry the party to victory in November.

Golf challenge

The former President dared his successor to another debate without moderators and, in a lighter moment that raised a smile from audience members baking in 103-degree Fahrenheit (39-degree Celsius) heat, challenged him to a round of golf.

“It will be among the most watched sporting events in history, maybe bigger than the Ryder Cup or even the Masters,” he deadpanned.

“And I will even give Joe Biden 10 strokes a side… and if he wins, I will give the charity of his choice, any charity that he wants, $1 million. And I bet you he doesn’t take the offer.”

The pair had previously sparred over who had a better long game during the debate, and the Biden campaign’s response to the latest challenge came in the form of a golf pun.

“Joe Biden doesn’t have time for Donald Trump’s weird antics — he’s busy leading America and defending the free world,” it said.

“Donald Trump is a liar, a convict, and a fraud only out for himself par for the course.”

Florida Senator Marco Rubio is a frontrunner in the contest to be named Mr. Trump’s running mate at next week’s Republican nominating convention in Milwaukee, and he was in the front row to cheer on Mr. Trump and deliver brief remarks of his own.

Nearby, a digital billboard underscored the evolution that the Republican Party has undergone under Mr. Trump, playing 2016 footage of Rubio eviscerating the man he is hoping to work with for the next four years.

“You all have friends that are thinking about voting for Donald Trump,” the now staunchly loyal Mr. Rubio was seen telling a crowd in Texas. “Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) speaks during a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump, at Trump’s golf resort in Doral, Florida, U.S., on July 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday revelled in the mounting turmoil surrounding President Joe Biden ’s campaign in the wake of their debate and teased the expected announcement of his Republican running mate with one of the top contenders, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, in attendance.

After days spent lying low, golfing and letting Democratic infighting play out in public, Mr. Trump used his return to the campaign trail in Florida to ratchet up his attacks on both Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Mr. Trump rallied his supporters at one of his Miami-area golf courses as the presumptive Republican nominee nears a deadline to announce his running mate. But he appears in no rush, as much of the political world’s attention is still centred on questions about Mr. Biden’s ability to govern for another four-year term.

Rubio to be running mate?

Mr. Trump repeatedly played into the speculation that he might elevate Mr. Rubio to his ticket.

Mr. Rubio, a Miami native and one of the contenders for the vice presidential post, was among the Florida politicians who spoke at the event.

At one point, Mr. Trump marveled at the number of reporters in attendance and said, “I think they probably think I’m going to be announcing that Marco is going to be vice president.”

Later, when he talked about his pledge to make tips tax-free, he remarked that Mr. Rubio “may or may not be there to vote for it.”

Hispanic American vote

Mr. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, is seen as a potential running mate who could help Mr. Trump as he tries to secure support from Hispanic Americans, a point the senator emphasised in his remarks as he switched several times in his remarks to Spanish.

The senator did not openly acknowledge any of the speculation about him joining Mr. Trump as a running mate. He instead skewered not only Mr. Biden, whom he called “the figurehead of a left-wing government, shadow government,” but Ms. Harris, whom he would need to debate head-on if he’s chosen for Mr. Trump’s ticket.

He notably seemed to insert himself into Mr. Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” slogan by saying: “Together, we’re not just going to make it great again. We elect this man as president, we will make together America greater than it has ever been.”

Barron Trump makes first appearance at a rally

Mr. Trump’s youngest child who recently turned 18, Barron, also made his first-ever appearance at one of his father’s rallies. Mr. Trump implored his son to stand, with the young man pumping his fist a few times as Mr. Trump said, “Welcome to the scene, Barron.”

Donald Trump. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Lawyers for Donald Trump asked a U.S. judge on Friday to partially pause the criminal case accusing the former president of mishandling classified documents, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that presidents have broad immunity for official acts.

Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, said the Supreme Court’s ruling that he has broad immunity from criminal prosecution in a case over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election also boosts his claim of immunity in the classified documents prosecution.

A pause is necessary “to minimize the adverse consequences to the institution of the presidency arising from this unconstitutional investigation and prosecution,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a court filing.

Donald Trump. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Former President Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case has been postponed until at least September after the judge agreed Tuesday to weigh the possible impact of a new Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.

Trump had been scheduled to face sentencing July 11 on his New York conviction on felony charges of falsifying business records. He denies any wrongdoing.

The postponement sets the sentencing for Sept. 18, well after the Republican National Convention, where Trump is set formally to accept the party’s nomination for president in this year’s race. The convention runs from July 15 to 18.

A Supreme Court ruling Monday granted broad immunity protections to presidents, while also restricting prosecutors from citing any official acts as evidence in trying to prove a president’s unofficial actions violated the law.

Hours after it was issued, Trump’s attorney requested that New York Judge Juan M. Merchan set aside the jury’s guilty verdict and delay the sentencing to consider how the high court’s ruling and could affect the hush money case.

He wrote that he’ll rule Sept. 6, and the next date in the case would be Sept. 18, “if necessary.”

Manhattan prosecutors said Tuesday that they wouldn’t oppose putting off the sentencing for at least two weeks.

In their filing Monday, defense attorneys argued that Manhattan prosecutors had placed “highly prejudicial emphasis on official-acts evidence,” including Trump’s social media posts and witness testimony about Oval Office meetings.

Prosecutors said Tuesday that they believed those arguments were “without merit,” but noted they were not opposed to adjourning the sentencing as the judge considers the matter.

Trump was convicted May 30 on 34 counts of falsifying business records arising from what prosecutors said was an attempt to cover up a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election.

Daniels claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 after meeting him at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. Trump has repeatedly denied that claim, saying at his June 27 debate with President Joe Biden: “I didn’t have sex with a porn star.”

Prosecutors said the Daniels payment was part of a broader scheme to buy the silence of people who might have gone public during the campaign with embarrassing stories alleging he had extramarital sex. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels and was later reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses.

Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years behind bars. Other potential sentences include probation, a fine or a conditional discharge which would require Trump to stay out of trouble to avoid additional punishment. Trump is the first ex-president convicted of a crime.

Trump will be required to be present in Merchan’s Manhattan courtroom when he is sentenced.

Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A New York judge partially lifted a gag order on Donald Trump following his conviction on criminal charges stemming from an effort to influence the 2016 election by buying a porn star’s silence. File
| Photo Credit: AFP

A New York judge partially lifted a gag order on Donald Trump on Tuesday following the Republican presidential candidate’s conviction on criminal charges stemming from an effort to influence the 2016 election by buying a porn star’s silence. The revised order now allows Trump to speak publicly about witnesses in the case and removes a prohibition on his commenting about the jury, but keeps in place restrictions on his statements about individual prosecutors and others involved in the case.

A separate order restricting Trump or anyone else from identifying members of the anonymous jury remains in effect, according to Tuesday’s order from Justice Juan Merchan. Trump’s lawyers argued the gag order was stifling his campaign speech and said it might limit his ability to respond to attacks from Democratic President Joe Biden during their forthcoming debate on Thursday.

Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said limits on Trump’s speech about trial witnesses were no longer needed. But they urged Merchan to keep in place restrictions on his comments about jurors, court staff and individual prosecutors, citing risks to their safety.

In the first criminal trial of a U.S. president, a Manhattan jury on May 30 found Trump guilty of covering up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who was threatening to go public before the 2016 election with her story of a sexual encounter with Trump. Trump, elected to a four-year term that year, denies the alleged 2006 encounter and has vowed to appeal his conviction. Sentencing is scheduled for July 11, four days before his party convenes to formally nominate him to challenge Biden for president ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

Merchan imposed the gag order before the trial began in April, finding that Trump’s history of threatening statements posed a risk of derailing the proceedings. The judge fined Trump $10,000 for violations of the order during the seven-week trial and warned him on May 6 that he would be jailed if he ran afoul of the order again.

In arguing some restrictions were still needed, prosecutors said Trump’s supporters had attempted to identify members of the anonymous jury and threatened violence against them. “There thus remains a critical need to protect the jurors in this case from attacks by defendant and those he inspires to action,” they wrote in a June 20 court filing.

Defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove in a June 11 court filing argued that holding Trump accountable for “harassing communications” by “independent third parties” violated his right to free speech.

They said Trump’s political opponents were using the restrictions as a “political sword.” They also said Trump was unable to respond to public attacks from Cohen and Daniels, who testified on behalf of the prosecution at trial.

The order does not prevent Trump from criticizing the case or from speaking about Merchan and Bragg.

Softening his stance on immigration, former U.S. president Donald Trump has promised to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges to prevent them from returning to their home countries like India and China where they become multibillionaires.

Mr. Trump’s departure from the anti-immigrant rhetoric comes ahead of the November presidential election in which immigration and deportation of illegal immigrants are among the key issues for voters.

Mr. Trump, however, always supported a merit-based legal immigration system.

Also Read | Visa politics: On Trump’s immigration policy

“What I want to do and what I will do is — you graduate from a college, I think you should get a Green Card automatically as part of your diploma, a Green Card to be able to stay in this country. And that includes junior colleges too,” Mr. Trump, 78, said in the “All-In” podcast.

A Green Card, known officially as a permanent resident card, is an identity document showing a person has permanent residency in the United States.

The podcast was hosted by four venture capitalists: Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg, three of whom are immigrants.

Mr. Trump’s remarks came as he was pressed by Calacanis to “promise us you will give us more ability to import the best and brightest around the world to America.” Mr. Trump, the presumptive candidate from the Republican Party, also lamented “stories where people graduated from a top college or from a college, and they desperately wanted to stay here, they had a plan for a company, a concept, and they can’t — they go back to India, they go back to China, they do the same basic company in those places.

“…and they become multi-billionaires employing thousands and thousands of people, and it could have been done here,” he said.

“Let me just tell you that it’s so sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, from the greatest schools. and lesser schools that are phenomenal schools also. And what I wanted to do, and I would have done this, but then we had to solve the COVID problem because that came in and, you know, sort of dominated for a little while, as you perhaps know,” Mr. Trump said in response.

Mr. Trump reiterated his first-term policy, about foreign students getting a Green Card after receiving a degree from a higher education institution in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) field.

“Anybody graduates from a college, you go in there for two years or four years, If you graduate or you get a doctorate degree from a college, you should be able to stay in this country,” Mr. Trump said.

“We force the brilliant people, the people that graduate from college, the people that are number one in their class from the best colleges, you have to be able to recruit these people and keep the people,” he asserted.

Somebody graduates at the top of the class; they can’t even make a deal with the company because they don’t think they’re going to be able to stay in the country.

“That is going to end on day one,” Mr. Trump announced.

According to the latest annual Open Doors report of the Institute of International Education more than a million international students from more than 210 places of origin are studying at U.S. higher education institutions during the 2022-23 academic year.

China remained the top-sending country in 2022/23, with 289,526 students studying in the U.S. But students from China saw a slight decline of 0.2 per cent compared to the previous year.

India, the second largest sending country, reached an all-time high of 268,923 international students in 2022/23, an increase of 35 per cent as against the previous year. Overall 53 per cent of all international students in 2022/23 were from China and India, comparable to the prior year.

However, the market share for each place of origin has shifted, with 27% of students from China and 25%t of students from India, in comparison to 33% from China and 18% from India in 2017-18. Mr. Trump’s latest comments stood in contrast to the immigration policy he adopted while in office and were a direct overture to wealthy business leaders whom he is courting as donors and supporters of his campaign, The New York Times said.

Mr. Trump had at times sought to reform the nation’s immigration system to scale back family-based immigration and to prioritise wealthy immigrants, who had valuable work skills or who were highly educated.

But during his term as president, Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda included restrictions on green cards, visa programmes, refugee resettlement and other forms of legal immigration, significantly reducing the number of lawful permanent residents entering the country.

He began his presidency by signing an executive order that banned travellers from seven predominantly Muslim countries and later embraced a proposal to cut legal immigration by half.

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump assailed the H-1B visa programme, favoured by tech companies as a way to hire foreign skilled workers, as a “theft of American prosperity.” The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows U.S. companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.

Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.

Mr. Trump expanded restrictions on legal immigration during the pandemic and his last year in office and had proposed suspending all immigration to the United States and deporting foreign students if they did not attend at least some classes in person.

A month before the 2020 election, Mr. Trump again moved to restrict the H-1B visa programme.

In an unprecedented verdict, a New York jury on May 30 unanimously convicted Donald J. Trump of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign. The trial, that led to the first-ever criminal conviction of a former U.S. President, could have a significant bearing on Mr. Trump’s voter support barely five months ahead of the U.S Presidential election where he seeks to recapture the White House.

The judge overseeing the case, Juan M. Merchan, set his sentencing for July 11 — just days before the Republican National Convention is set to convene to formally declare Mr. Trump as the presidential nominee. The conviction on 34 Class E felonies carries a potential penalty of four years of imprisonment for each count, although the judge may also consider probation or home confinement as possible alternatives. However, the conviction will not deter him from running for president for another term in the absence of any explicit constitutional bar.

The real estate tycoon faces three other felony indictments, but the Manhatten case — often criticised by legal experts as the weakest of the four prosecutions— is undoubtedly significant since it is the only one to conclude before the November election. The other three cases — two involving accusations in Atlanta and Washington that he conspired to overturn the 2020 election, and a federal indictment in Florida charging him with illegally hoarding top-secret records — are currently mired in delays and appeals.

Also read: Trump hush money trial LIVE updates

Reacting to the verdict, Mr. Trump said that he would be appealing the conviction while downplaying the allegations underlying the case. “It’s not hush money. It’s a nondisclosure agreement, totally legal, totally common,” he said. Addressing reporters at the Trump Tower in New York, the former president further claimed that the trial was “rigged” and a tactic of the Democratic party to derail his electoral bid.

The felony charges

The historic trial involved charges that Mr. Trump falsified business records in an attempt to cover up payments made to Stormy Daniels, a porn actor who claimed that she had a sexual liaison with the married former president in 2006. The $130,000 payment was made by Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen to buy Ms. Daniel’s silence during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential race — an attempt to interfere in the elections according to the prosecution. When Mr. Cohen was reimbursed, the payments were recorded as legal expenses in an “unlawful attempt” to disguise the true purpose of the transactions, the prosecution contended. However, the defense argued that they were legitimate legal retainer fees.

The trial, which featured more than four weeks of riveting testimonies, finally persuaded the 12-member jury that Mr. Trump had hatched a conspiracy with Mr. Cohen and David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, to buy and suppress claims that could have jeopardised his candidacy. Jury deliberations are, however, confidential and the reasoning behind the ruling will remain unclear unless any of the jurors decides to speak publicly.

The 34 counts were divided into three categories — 11 related to invoices from Mr. Cohen showing payments made to Ms. Daniels, 11 related to checks signed by Trump or using his funds to reimburse Mr. Cohen and 12 related to accounting entries documenting these reimbursements in Mr. Trump’s financial records.

Editorial | In the dock: On Donald Trump and his legal challenge

From the moment Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced charges against the real estate tycoon more than a year ago, legal analysts questioned his unconventional strategy — it is not illegal to pay hush money and the misdemeanour counts were all barred by the statute of limitations. However, Mr. Bragg contended that the case was fundamentally about an attempt to corrupt the 2016 presidential election, not merely about past sexual encounters. He argued that this constituted a crime involving the violation ofSstate election laws aimed “to manipulate and defraud the voters, to pull the wool over their eyes in a coordinated fashion.”

Prosecutors were “successful at reframing this as essentially a disinformation operation on the 2016 election, not just the coverup of an affair,” Asha Rangappa, a lawyer and a former FBI agent told Time Magazine.

The trial

A major challenge for the prosecution was to establish Mr. Cohen’s credibility — the star witness of the trial whose loyalty Mr. Trump had lost. In 2018, he had pleaded guilty to multiple crimes involving the hush-money scheme, including lying to Congress and federal investigators. During the proceedings, the defense lawyer Todd Blanche told the jury about Mr. Cohen’s previous deceitful conduct, including an instance in which he allegedly stole from Mr. Trump’s company. However, prosecutors retorted by saying that Mr. Cohen was hired “because he was willing to lie and cheat on Mr. Trump’s behalf.”

Over the last couple of months, Mr. Trump has repeatedly targeted Mr. Cohen and the jurors in the case, despite a court-issued gag order that prohibits him from making such public statements. This resulted in Judge Juan M. Merchan holding him guilty of contempt of court and even warning that he might place the former president behind bars.

In the courtroom, the jurors were presented with a recording secretly captured by Mr. Cohen in September 2016. In it, Mr. Trump could be heard discussing a hush money payment to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who claimed to have had a year-long affair with him. The evidence was further bolstered by Mr. Pecker’s testimony that he had agreed to ensure that unflattering stories which could damage the Trump campaign were never made public. This included having his company buy Ms. McDougal’s silence.

Notably, Ms. Daniels herself testified, offering a detailed account of her affair with the former president which began during a celebrity golf tournament on the shores of Lake Tahoe in 2006. In some of his most incriminating testimony, Mr. Cohen said that Mr. Trump and the then Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg had discussed Ms. Daniel’s payment plan in a January 2017 meeting shortly before Mr. Trump’s inauguration as the president. 

“To keep the loyalty and to do the things that he had asked me to do, I violated my moral compass, and I suffered the penalty, as has my family,” Mr. Cohen told the jury in a candid confession.

Although Mr. Trump did not take the stand during the proceedings, his lawyers denied the sexual encounters and argued that his celebrity status, particularly during the 2016 campaign, made him susceptible to extortion attempts. They claimed that the hush money deals were motivated by personal considerations such as the impact on his family and his business, and not political ones.

What happens next?

With Mr. Trump set to appeal his conviction, the American electorate will be left with two distinct choices — a convicted felon or an unpopular incumbent. Although he remains highly competitive in polls, a poll from Bloomberg and Morning Consult earlier this year found that 53% of voters in key swing states would refuse to vote for the Republican if he were convicted. Concurring with this, former prosecutor and government ethics expert Melanie Sloan told Al Jazeera the conviction could “drive a wedge” between Mr. Trump and more moderate constituencies.

The sentencing, set for July 11, will be preceded by the submission of a pre-sentencing report with recommendations based on the defendant’s criminal history. Given that Mr. Trump has no prior convictions, this is likely to work in his favour.

The ruling is also unlikely to dampen his chances of contesting the presidential elections. The U.S. Constitution sets very few eligibility criteria for presidents — they must be at least 35 years old, be a “natural born” citizen and should have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years. While some States prohibit felons from running for sState and local offices, these laws do not apply to federal offices.

However, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment arguably sets out another criterion — it bars those who have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after taking an oath to support the Constitution from holding federal offices. Activists have pointed out that the then-president’s actions in the run-up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol constitute participation in an insurrection. However, the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year ruled that Congress would have to pass a special law invoking this prohibition before it can bar Mr. Trump from Colorado’s ballot.

As a convicted felon in New York but a resident of Florida, Mr. Trump’s ability to exercise his franchise depends on the sentence that is imposed on him — and when or if he completes it. Under Florida law, a person with a felony conviction from another State is ineligible to vote only “if the conviction would make the person ineligible to vote in the State where the person was convicted.” New York is one of 23 states where people convicted of a felony can vote, even if they are on parole or probation, as long as they are not incarcerated.

“After New York goes through their process, whether President Trump can vote with a felony conviction will depend on what the State of Florida does,” Neil Volz, deputy director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition told The Guardian. “Our belief is that no one should be above the law or below the law when it comes to voter eligibility for people with convictions and that everyone should operate under the same set of standards,” he added.

Donald Trump launched into attacks on the judge in his criminal trial and continued to undermine New York’s criminal justice system on May 31 as he tried to repackage his conviction on 34 felony charges as fuel, not an impediment, to his latest White House bid.

Trump spoke to reporters at his namesake tower in Manhattan on Friday, his return to campaigning a day after he was convicted of trying to illegally influence the 2016 election by falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment to a porn actor who claimed they had sex.

Also read | Analysis: How former U.S. President Donald Trump got convicted at his hush money trial

Trump, as defiant as ever, argued the verdict was illegitimate and driven by politics and sought to downplay the allegations underlying the case.

“It’s not hush money. It’s a nondisclosure agreement, totally legal, totally common,” he said.

In a message aimed to galvanize his supporters, he declared: “If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone.”

While the guilty verdict against him and his vow to fight appeared to motivate his base of supporters, including those who began pouring donations into his campaign, it’s unclear if any of this will help him with independent voters who will be decisive in the November election.

No former president or presumptive party nominee has ever faced a felony conviction or the prospect of prison time, and Trump is expected to keep his legal troubles central to his campaign. He has long argued without evidence that the four indictments against him were orchestrated by Democratic President Joe Biden to try to keep him out of the White House. The hush money case was filed by local prosecutors in Manhattan who do not work for the Justice Department or any White House office.

Trump chose to start Friday in the atrium of Trump Tower, the brass and rose marble lobby where he descended his golden escalator to announce his 2016 campaign nine years ago next month.

In his disjointed remarks, Trump initially started attacking Biden on immigration and tax policies before pivoting to his case, growling that he was threatened with jail time if he violated a gag order. He picked apart intricate parts of the case and trial proceedings as unfair, making false statements and misrepresentations as he did so.

Trump said he wanted to testify but said the judge wanted to go into every detail. “I would have liked to have testified,” he said. “But you would have said something out of whack like ‘it was a beautiful sunny day,’ and it was actually raining out.”

Trump, who had the right to testify but didn’t, also tested the limits of the gag order that prohibits him from publicly critiquing witnesses including Michael Cohen, calling his former fixer, the star witness in the case, “a sleazebag.”

His son Eric Trump and daughter-in-law Lara Trump joined him, but his wife, Melania Trump, who has been publicly silent since the verdict, was not seen.

Outside, on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, supporters gathered across the street were flying a giant red “TRUMP OR DEATH” sign that was flapping in front of a high-end boutique. A small group of protesters held up signs that said “Guilty” and “Justice matters.”

On Friday morning, his campaign announced it had raised $34.8 million as donations poured in after the verdict. That’s more than $1 million for each felony charge and more than his political operation raised in January and February combined.

Trump and his campaign had been preparing for a guilty verdict for days, even as they held out hope for a hung jury. On Tuesday, Trump railed that not even Mother Teresa, the nun and saint, could beat the charges, which he repeatedly labeled as “rigged.”

His top aides on Wednesday released a memo in which they insisted a verdict would have no impact on the election, whether Trump was convicted or acquitted.

The news nonetheless landed with a jolt. Trump, his team and reporters at the courthouse had been under the impression that the jury on Thursday would wrap up deliberations for the day at 4:30 p.m. Trump sat smiling and chatting with his lawyers as the proceedings seemed to be coming to a close.

Trump had spent the hours before the verdict was announced sequestered in the private courtroom where he had spent breaks throughout the trial, huddled with his attorneys and campaign aides, eating from a revolving lunch menu of McDonald’s, pizza, and subs.

As the jury was deciding his fate, he filled his time making calls, firing off social media missives and chatting with friends, including developer Steve Witkoff, who joined him in court, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who is considered a top vice presidential contender.

In a sign that they expected deliberations to continue, Trump’s holding room was outfitted with a television Thursday, according to two people familiar with the setup who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the case.

Instead, Merchan announced that a verdict had been reached. Thirty minutes later, Trump listened as the jury delivered a guilty verdict on every count. Trump sat stone-faced while the verdict was read.

His campaign fired off a flurry of fundraising appeals, and GOP allies rallied to his side. One text message called him a “political prisoner,” even though he hasn’t yet found out if he will be sentenced to prison. The campaign also began selling black “Make America Great Again” caps to reflect a “dark day in history.”

Aides reported an immediate rush of contributions so intense that WinRed, the platform the campaign uses for fundraising, crashed. The $34.8 million raised Thursday did not include what Trump collected at his in-person fundraiser or any donations that continued to come in online Friday.

“President Trump and our campaign are immensely grateful from this outpouring of support from patriots across our country,” Trump’s senior campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said in a statement. “President Trump is fighting to save our nation and November 5th is the day Americans will deliver the real verdict.”

Trump has long complained that the trial limited his campaign appearances for several weeks. “I want to campaign,” he had told reporters Thursday morning before a verdict was reached.

It is unclear, however, how much Trump’s schedule will ramp up in the days ahead. He held only a handful of public campaign events as the trial unfolded, despite the fact that he had Wednesdays, as well as evenings and weekends, to do what he wished.

He’s set in the upcoming two months to have his first debate with Biden, announce a running mate and formally accept his party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention.

But before he goes to Milwaukee for the RNC, Trump will have to return to court on July 11 for sentencing. He could face penalties ranging from a fine or probation up to four years in prison.