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When a Manhattan jury found Donald J. Trump guilty, it should have sent shock waves through the nation. Yet, though the trial and conviction of a former president was unprecedented in American history, it seems most people couldnt have cared less. As Michelle Goldberg recently noted, only 16 percent of respondents to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll said they had followed the first few weeks of the trial very closely, and when asked how they felt, many replied, bored.

In its way, that must have annoyed Mr. Trump: how insulting, that no one would care. There was media coverage, but no frenzy, no rallies around the world in protest when he was convicted. But to win in the court of public opinion, Mr. Trump must now transform a trial in a run-down Manhattan courtroom from a shoulder shrug into an unforgettable event, with a story powerful enough to keep his supporters energized, if not outraged, and to drum up sympathy from the undecideds.

For months, Mr. Trump has been laying the groundwork, spinning his tale of tyranny and martyrdom (his own of course) and styling himself as the victim of an administration that has to play dirty to eliminate a rival as formidable as he. That story of persecution has only grown louder in recent days. Moments after hearing the jury pronounce him guilty, he predictably called the trial rigged, the judge conflicted, and a trial by jury as well as government institutions like the justice system irrelevant compared with the verdict that galvanized voters will presumably hand him in November. Politics, not the law, is his mtier, and history is not his concern. His preoccupation, and his talent, is storytelling.

Instinctively he grasps the kind of broader stories that break through from the courtroom to the public. These stories fueled what pundits, particularly in the 20th century, frequently dubbed the trial of the century trials that captured the hearts and minds of the public, that sold newspapers, and that would grip the whole nation, if not the world, with their cultural significance. Each of these trials riveted the country by bringing to the foreground moral values and failings that affected all Americans.

Take the Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee in 1925, about a new law that barred the theory of evolution from being taught in public schools, which became a showdown between a three-time presidential candidate, the eloquent politician William Jennings Bryan, and the famous defense lawyer Clarence Darrow. Covered day after day on the front page of newspapers coast to coast, it even found its way into Hemingways novel The Sun Also Rises. The issue here was faith and reason, or what passes for both, and whether government could mandate belief. A young high school teacher, John Scopes, purposefully broke the recently passed law to show, as the brilliant attorney Arthur Garfield Hays argued, that such laws result in hate and intolerance, that they are conceived in bigotry and born in ignorance ignorance of the Bible, of religion, of history, and of science.

There was the trial of the anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants accused of robbery and murder in Massachusetts, which caused such international indignation that rallies against their execution were held from London to Johannesburg. Edna St. Vincent Millay published a poem titled Justice Denied in Massachusetts in The New York Times to protest the handling of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, and Felix Frankfurter called the misrepresentations, suppressions and misquotations of its presiding judge disgraceful.

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Opinion | Trump's Most Dangerous Gift - The New York Times

Seated in front of a computer at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Donald Trump will be asked to explain, politely, why he is a man who can be trusted.

The former president has been judged by a jury of his peers, being found guilty of 34 felonies. It is now time, in the eyes of the New York criminal justice system, to devise a fitting punishment. Accordingly, a probation officer on Monday will ask Trump, via video conference, whether he accepts responsibility for his crimes; they will assess his finances (and his mental health); they will consider his family life and ties to community; and they will want to know whether the presumptive Republican nominee continues to associate with criminals.

The list of past and present members of Trumps inner circle who have been found guilty of serious crimes is long and growing. Just this year, two of his former White House aides, Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, were sentenced to prison for defying congressional subpoenas. Allen Weisselberg, former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, is currently on Rikers Island. Paul Manafort, Trumps 2016 campaign manager, and MAGA dirty-tricks specialist Roger Stone each received multi-year prison sentences only to be freed by Trump pardons.

"[Former] President Trump has surrounded himself with a bunch of killers who work every day to help him win," as Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung put it to Axios in March. If thats still the case come July 11, when Trump is due to be sentenced by Judge Juan Merchan in his hush-money case, that could be a serious problem

Theres nothing wrong with his telling the probation office, I didnt do anything wrong, and Im not admitting guilt, and Im planning on appealing, Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor, told MSNBC. Every defendant has a right to do that.

More difficult, Weissmann said, will be the question about whether Trumps still associating with criminals.

Hes going to have to discuss whether he still coordinates with Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon. Remember, all those people have been found guilty by a jury and are felons themselves, Weissmann noted.

In March, CNN reported that Manafort was in discussions with Trumps campaign team about a possible role going forward. But last month, citing the media and its desire to use me as a distraction, Manafort said that he would not be doing any formal campaign work but helping from the sidelines every other way I can.

But as for Stone, hes been a frequent presence at Mar-a-Lago lately, Axios reported in March, noting that he attended Trumps victory party there on Super Tuesday.

Going forward, such a celebration could land Trump behind bars himself.

Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney who teaches law at the University of Michigan, told MSNBC that the terms of probation that Trump will likely have to comply with may prove difficult. A prohibition on associating with other convicted felons, typical in cases of other offenders, would in particular be challenging for him.

But if hes not willing to comply with those kind of conditions, his alternative is prison, McQuade said. Given his other legal troubles, and his repeated contempt violations in the hush money case, its possible hes headed that way regardless. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would at least be justified in requesting it, according to McQuade.

I think in light of the way that Donald Trump violated the gag order in this case and his continued lack of remorse in this case, she said, [it] would lean heavily in favor of requesting at least some prison time.

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Legal expert: Probation terms may prove "challenging" for Trump but "his alternative is prison" - Salon

Former President Donald J. Trump used a dubious accounting maneuver to claim improper tax breaks from his troubled Chicago tower, according to an Internal Revenue Service inquiry uncovered by The New York Times and ProPublica. Losing a yearslong audit battle over the claim could mean a tax bill of more than $100 million.

The 92-story, glass-sheathed skyscraper along the Chicago River is the tallest and, at least for now, the last major construction project by Mr. Trump. Through a combination of cost overruns and the bad luck of opening in the teeth of the Great Recession, it was also a vast money loser.

But when Mr. Trump sought to reap tax benefits from his losses, the I.R.S. has argued, he went too far and in effect wrote off the same losses twice.

The first write-off came on Mr. Trumps tax return for 2008. With sales lagging far behind projections, he claimed that his investment in the condo-hotel tower met the tax code definition of worthless, because his debt on the project meant he would never see a profit. That move resulted in Mr. Trump reporting losses as high as $651 million for the year, The Times and ProPublica found.

There is no indication the I.R.S. challenged that initial claim, though that lack of scrutiny surprised tax experts consulted for this article. But in 2010, Mr. Trump and his tax advisers sought to extract further benefits from the Chicago project, executing a maneuver that would draw years of inquiry from the I.R.S. First, he shifted the company that owned the tower into a new partnership. Because he controlled both companies, it was like moving coins from one pocket to another. Then he used the shift as justification to declare $168 million in additional losses over the next decade.

The issues around Mr. Trumps case were novel enough that, during his presidency, the I.R.S. undertook a high-level legal review before pursuing it. The Times and ProPublica, in consultation with tax experts, calculated that the revision sought by the I.R.S. would create a new tax bill of more than $100 million, plus interest and potential penalties.

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Trump May Owe $100 Million From Double-Dip Tax Breaks, Audit Shows - The New York Times

Donald J. Trump, the onetime president, and Stormy Daniels, the longtime porn star, despise one another. But when Ms. Daniels returned to the witness stand at Mr. Trumps criminal trial on Thursday, his lawyers made them sound a lot alike.

He wrote more than a dozen self-aggrandizing books; she wrote a tell-all memoir. He mocked her appearance on social media; she fired back with a scatological insult. He peddled a $59.99 Bible; she hawked a $40 Stormy, saint of indictments candle, that carried her image draped in a Christ-like robe.

During Thursdays grueling cross-examination, Mr. Trumps lawyers sought to discredit Ms. Daniels as a money-grubbing extortionist who used a passing proximity to Mr. Trump to attain fame and riches. But the more the defense assailed her self-promoting merchandise and online screeds, the more Ms. Daniels resembled the man she was testifying against: a master of marketing, a savant of social-media scorn.

Not unlike Mr. Trump, she said on the stand, though unlike him, she did it without the power and platform of the presidency.

Ms. Danielss appearance plunged the proceeding into turmoil as the defense pleaded with the judge to declare a mistrial in the first criminal trial of an American president. Ms. Danielss graphic account of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, they argued, had inflicted irreparable damage on the defense.

But the judge, Juan M. Merchan, rejected the request and rebuked defense lawyers, noting that their decision to deny that the tryst had even occurred had opened the door for much of her explicit testimony. Ms. Daniels offered jurors a first-person account of the encounter with Mr. Trump, helping prosecutors bolster belief in an incident that underpins the case.

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Stormy Daniels, Echoing Trump's Style, Pushes Back at Lawyer's Attacks - The New York Times

A sex discrimination lawsuit against Donald Trumps campaign has triggered new accusations that Trumps lawyers have intentionally covered up settlement payments to women, in violation of federal law.

On Friday, watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, demanding an investigation into the alleged cover-up. The complaint cites new allegations from 2016 Trump campaign aide A.J. Delgado, which she lodged in a sworn court declaration earlier this week as part of her ongoing discrimination suit against Trumps political operation.

Delgados filing presented evidence of top Trump attorney Marc Kasowitz openly admitting that the campaign wanted to use a law firm to cover up a potential settlement payout in 2017. The arrangement, as Delgado described it, appears specifically designed to evade the consequences of federal disclosure laws that require campaigns to publicly report the identities of payment recipients.

In other words, the payment would be routed through a middleman, to hide the fact that the Campaign had settled, from the public and the FEC, Delgado stated. I thus have direct, personal experience with the Defendant-Campaign hiding settlement payments to women, routing them through a middleman law firm, which to the public would only appear as payments for legal services.

Delgado also claimed to have information and reason to believe that other campaign payments have hidden settlements with women who raised complaints of gender discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, and sexual harassment. Those payments, she said, are related to the $4.1 million that flowed to Kasowitzs law firm over a two-month period immediately following the November 2020 election, as well as millions in mysterious legal reimbursements to the campaigns compliance firm, Red Curve Solutions, which The Daily Beast first reported earlier this month, prompting a federal complaint.

The declaration is particularly significant in that it captures a direct admission of the campaigns actual intentions behind this middleman arrangementto keep the existence of a settlement from the public, and, by doing so, from the FEC itself.

In a statement to The Daily Beast, CREW president Noah Bookbinder demanded an investigation, saying that Delgados allegations raise serious concerns about a potentially illegal cover-up.

The allegations made in AJ Delgados declaration paint a deeply troubling picture of potentially illegal activity carried out by Donald Trumps campaign. The FEC must conduct an investigation to determine the validity of these claims and establish the degree to which any wrongdoing occurred, Bookbinder said.

The statement added that the public has the right to know how political money is spent, and schemes to hide that information undercut Americans faith in our political system.

Donald Trumps admission of using pass-through payments to hide their purpose and protect his political prospects makes it even more important that the FEC investigate. No candidate or campaign is above the law, not even Trump, the statement continued.

The Daily Beast sent comment requests to the Trump campaign and Delgado, but did not receive a reply. In a statement, a Kasowitz Benson Torres spokesperson wrote: Ms. Delgados accusations that there were FEC violations or that the firm acted as a middleman to hid[e] settlement payments to women from the Campaign are pure fantasy and false.

Delgados statements come as she pursues a sex discrimination lawsuit against the 2016 campaign, where she served as a senior adviser but was back-seated when she revealed that she had become pregnant. (The father was Delgados then-supervisor and top Trump 2024 adviser Jason Miller, whom Delgado has also accused of raping hera claim Miller denies.)

Delgado, a Harvard Law grad who is representing herself in the case, claims the campaign sidelined her specifically because she was pregnant, and is seeking damages for unlawful discrimination.

The Daily Beast reported last week that Trumps previous lawyers in the Delgado case have bailed on him. The firmLaRocca, Hornik, Greenberg, Kittredge, Carlin & McPartlandhas defended Trump in other high-profile cases against women, including E. Jean Carroll, but the attorneys told the court last week that they were withdrawing, citing an irreparable breakdown in their relationship with the Trump campaign.

According to Delgados declaration, during her brief 2017 settlement negotiations with the campaignwhich, according to Delgado, the campaign ultimately renegedTrump lawyer Marc Kasowitz expressed to her that Trump and the Campaign would need to keep this confidential because Trump is known for not settling.

That proposal caught the attention of Delgados own lawyers, who raised the issue of federal disclosure laws.

My attorneys expressed this would not be possible because disbursements by a Campaign are public record, the declaration said.

Kasowitz, however, dismissed the concerns easily, Delgado said, telling her that disclosure was not a problem at all, and, what we would do is the campaign pays me and then I cut a check to you guys.

Now, Delgado is alleging that Kasowitz has funneled Trump campaign money to other women making discrimination claims.

In all, Kasowitzs firm has received about $4.5 million from the Trump campaign, almost all of it coming in the two months after the 2020 election. In that time, FEC records show, the campaign issued three massive payments to Kasowitz in flat dollar amounts$600,000 on Nov. 11, $1 million on Dec. 18, and $2.5 million on Jan. 13, 2021. Delgado now claims that those payments are related to complaints of gender discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, and sexual harassment. (At the time, Kasowitz served as Trumps counsel in the opening stages of E. Jean Carrolls first sexual assault lawsuit.)

Delgado also says that some of the mysterious legal reimbursements to Trumps campaign finance compliance firm, Red Curve, appear related to discrimination complaints. (Red Curve does not provide any actual legal services.) The Daily Beast uncovered those payments this month, prompting nonprofit watchdog Campaign Legal Center to file an FEC complaint alleging that the Trump team was obscuring the nature of those payments.

As The Daily Beast previously reported, Trump has a history of shielding payouts behind law firms, including his 2016 campaign. That practice has continued through this year, with his Save America leadership PAC reporting a $392,638 legal consulting expense to Trump attorney Alina Habba on Valentines Daythe exact dollar amount that Trump was ordered to pay to The New York Times after losing his defamation case the month prior.

The CREW complaint also notes that Delgados claims overlap with recent eventsthe 2016 hush-money payments currently at the center of Trumps criminal trial in Manhattan.

The use of pass-throughs to hide the true purpose of payments is not unfamiliar to Mr. Trump and his businesses, the complaint states. For example, Mr. Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, for payments made to catch and kill a story concerning Mr. Trumps alleged extramarital relations.

CREW also notes that Trump himself made recent public remarks about that case, confirming his belief that payments routed through attorneys could be marked legal expenses even if they were reimbursements for expenses paid to third parties.

Regardless of what Mr. Trump may have experienced in the business world, federal law does not permit a political committee to report any expense routed through an attorney or any other intermediary as a payment to the intermediary for legal expenses or otherwise, the complaint states.

Rather, federal law requires political committees provide detailed and truthful information about who they are paying and why they are paying them, even if doing so would reveal facts embarrassing to the campaign such as the settlement of legal claims, the complaint states.

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Trump Campaign Hid Settlements With Women, New Complaint Says - The Daily Beast