MANHATTAN (CN) — In a single moment that changed the course of history, Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime.
Trump was found guilty Thursday on all 34 counts for falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money scheme related to his 2016 presidential run by a New York City jury that spent the previous month listening to evidence, witness testimony and attorneys outlining their cases in a Manhattan criminal courtroom.
“The presidency is the highest office in the land, and there is an expectation that presidents are supposed to represent kind of the best the United States has as far as character, leadership, responsibility,” Meena Bose, a political science professor at Hofstra University, told Courthouse News. “And the convicted felon obviously doesn’t meet those expectations.”
While Trump is the first U.S. president to be charged with — and now convicted of — a crime, he’s certainly not the first president to face public scrutiny for misconduct.
President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, perhaps the most infamous in U.S. history, resulted in public outcry and the former president’s resignation. He was later pardoned by his successor, President Gerald Ford, and avoided any potential criminal charges as a result.
But the difference between Trump and Nixon, of course, is that while Nixon resigned, Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in the upcoming presidential election. In fact, after Trump’s verdict came down Thursday evening, his campaign reported nearly $35 million in small-donor contributions.
“I think for almost anybody else, almost any other presidential candidate, this would require the person to probably step down,” Bose said. “But I don’t see that happening with Donald Trump, so that’s a big difference from Watergate and Nixon.”
Bose added that Trump has proven himself repeatedly to be a “different candidate” from any other who has preceded him, primarily for his ability to evade career-crushing consequences since he first emerged on the presidential ticket in 2016.
“Politically, other politicians would feel pressure to step aside,” Bose said. “But Donald Trump didn’t do so in 2016, he did everything he could to try and stay in office in 2020, and even after January 6 and an unprecedented second impeachment in 2021, ran for reelection and kind of effectively ended the primary contest very early without participating in a single primary debate.”
But no matter what Trump does, many have praised the jury’s verdict and lauded the former president’s conviction as a success for the justice system.
“This is a reaffirmation of the rule of law,” Representative Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, said in a news conference Friday. “The importance of what happened yesterday cannot be overestimated. It also shows that our justice system works.”
Nadler, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, added the oft-repeated axiom that nobody, not even a prominent political figure, is above the law.
“I think it’s a moment to celebrate that despite all the pressures, this is still a country of laws. This is still a state of laws and no one is above the law,” Nadler said.
Still, some experts say there's a concern that if Trump wins a second presidential term in November, it could have disastrous effects for the rule of law.
There isn’t much infrastructure in the American political system to hold sitting presidents to certain legal requirements, said Gregor Germain, a law professor at Syracuse University.
“Trump has made it pretty clear that he’s going for revenge, and he is going to politicize the offices," Germain said. "And we don’t have a way to deal with conflicts of interest with the president of the United States. And so those are legitimate issues.”
Sentencing for Trump is currently set for July 11, just days before he is expected to be named as the nominee at the Republican National Convention.
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