Trump delivers remarks on his guilty verdict: Key moments and analysis

Trump’s guilty verdict is prompting some of his supporters and pundits to compare the country’s current state to the fall of the Roman Empire.

Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform X, referenced the civil war that preceded the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has since expressed his support for Trump, chipped in with a similar comparison Friday while traveling in Italy.

“This is the kind of thing you would see in the fall of the ancient Roman Empire,” Ramaswamy said in a video on X. “Sometimes you just go abroad and you see the way that you’re viewed, it reminds you of how much our own nation has rotted at its core.”

A steady flow of images showing upside-down American flags has appeared on social media as his supporters and right-wing commentators protest his felony conviction.

Right-wing pundits and podcast hosts with hundreds of thousands of followers, as well as regular Americans, rallied around the inverted flag in the hours after Trump’s conviction on Thursday. Among them were Fox News Channel contributors Guy Benson and Katie Pavlich, conservative talk show hosts Graham Allen and Owen Shroyer, and far-right conspiracy theorist and “Stop the Steal” rally organizer Ali Alexander.

▶ Read more about the use of upside-down flags.

President Joe Biden said that Donald Trump’s response to the jury’s guilty verdict is “irresponsible.”

Trump has claimed falsely the trial against him was rigged and connected to the Biden administration.

Biden said from the White House on Friday that the jury was chosen like any other in the U.S., and they heard five weeks of testimony and Trump had “every opportunity” to defend himself. He said no one is above the law.

“It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this is rigged just because they don’t like the verdict,” Biden said.

Trump’s conviction marks the end of the former president’s historic trial, but the fight over the case is far from over.

Now comes the sentencing and the potential for a prison sentence. A lengthy appellate process. And all the while, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee still has to deal with three more criminal cases and a campaign that could see him return to the White House.

▶ Read more about the fallout from Trump’s conviction.

The former president walked straight to his vehicle before returning to wave to supporters gathered outside the building.

It’s unclear where he’s headed.

Trump claimed on Friday that “record levels of terrorists have come into our country.” While the number of foreigners on the terrorist watch list has increased, federal immigration authorities say they “are very uncommon” and a small fraction of the total number of migrants who cross the border. From October 2022 to September 2023, the U.S. Border Patrol reported seeing 169, compared to 98 the previous year. Since October 2023, the Border Patrol has reported 80 encounters.

The former president also claimed, like he has done in recent speeches, that Chinese migrants are arriving in the U.S. to build an army, saying 29,000 have arrived in the last few months.

The U.S. has seen a larger than tenfold rise in the number of Chinese migrants with 37,000 of them being arrested in 2023, there has been no evidence that they have tried to mount a military force or training network. Interviews with some of these migrants reveal they were coming to escape the country or looking for a better life.

Hundreds of people remain gathered outside Trump Tower, with supporters and detractors of the former president waving flags, shouting and chanting against a backdrop of Fifth Avenue luxury stores including Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Armani and Prada.

Supporters have been blasting rock music, honking and waving giant Trump flags, including one that reads “TRUMP OR DEATH.”

Detractors have been chanting “Guilty!” in response.

Even if Trump’s sentence, scheduled to be delivered July 11, includes time behind bars, he wouldn’t even be the first candidate to run for that office while imprisoned. That piece of history belongs to Eugene V. Debs, who ran on the Socialist Party ticket in 1920 — and garnered almost a million votes, or about 3 percent.

The circumstances are obviously different. Debs, despite his influence and fame, was effectively a fringe candidate that year; Trump has already held the office and is running as the near-certain nominee of one of the country’s two major political parties. But there are similarities, too.

▶ Read more about Debs and his presidential run.

“If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” he declared in a message aimed at his base.

While the guilty verdict against him Thursday 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’ll be decisive in the November election.

House Republicans announced Friday that they will demand Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Matthew Colangelo, the lead investigator of the Trump case, appear before lawmakers next month.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said that the House Select Committee on weaponization will host a hearing with the two witnesses on June 13.

Jordan, one of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, had previously opened an investigation into Bragg and his case against the former president. He and other lawmakers also traveled to New York City in April 2023 for a hearing on the prosecution’s case.

Trump circled back to a lot of the same authoritarian themes he has repeatedly focused on in speeches and rallies, painting the U.S. under President Biden as a “corrupt” and “fascist” nation.

He accused Biden of being “a very big danger to our country” and called him a “Manchurian candidate,” a phrase implying the president is corrupt and being used as a puppet by a political enemy.

He called the committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol “thugs.”

“We’re living in a fascist state.”

He’s largely been off the campaign trail, but Trump’s posttrial remarks served as a condensed version of many of the themes he traditionally hits during his rally speeches.

Deviating from his vow to appeal the hush money verdict and characterization of the trial as a “scam,” Trump also repeatedly went after Biden for failures on border security and “record levels of terrorists who come into our country.”

He also falsely claimed that tens of thousands of military-age Chinese men have recently come into the U.S., looking “like perfect soldiers.”

Since late 2022 — when China’s three-year COVID-19 lockdown began to lift — the U.S. has seen a sharp rise in the number of Chinese migrants. But there has been no evidence that they have tried to mount a military force or training network.

As is standard at his rallies, Trump also appealed to supporters to contribute financially to his campaign.

Stay tuned as AP reporters continue to parse through Trump’s remarks with reporting and analysis.

As he characterized what he sees as a failing country, Trump also briefly hearkened back to Jan. 6, 2021, and what he said are false accusations that are at the center of another case against him.

He leveled specific critiques toward members of Congress who held committee meetings probing the Capitol assault — Trump also denied that he had tried to physically direct a Secret Service agent to drive him to the Capitol, which was part of testimony before the Select Committee.

He also called former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, among his critics, “the most emotional human being I think I’ve ever seen.”

Trump is calling President Joe Biden “the worst president in the history of our country.”

He called him the “most incompetent” and “most dishonest.”

“You take a look at the way he treats China, Russia, so many others,” he said. “He’s a very big danger to our country.”

The former president said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg should be looking at “rampant” crime in New York City, “at levels no one has ever seen before.” He cited a man being stabbed by a machete in Times Square on Thursday.

However, crime in New York City is nowhere near the levels seen in the 1990s.

The latest crime data from the NYPD shows major crime reports are down this year compared to the same period last year. Through the first week in May, the number of murders was down more than 15% from the same period last year, and down 26% from 2021. Shootings have dropped 41% since 2021.

Trump said he thinks he broke a record in the history of politics by raising $39 million dollars since the verdict was announced.

He said it happened over a 10-hour period with small money donors.

Earlier Friday morning, his campaign noted a different figure: $34.8 million.

Trump incorrectly stated that the New York prosecutors who charged him were not allowed to look into alleged federal campaign finance violations.

Manhattan prosecutors didn’t charge Trump with federal violations — that’s not allowed — but they listed the allegations as one of three “unlawful acts” that jurors were asked to consider as they weighed the charges. To convict Trump, jurors had to find that not only did he falsify business records, but that he did so to commit or conceal another crime.

Prosecutors said the other crime was a violation of a state election law barring conspiracies to promote or prevent an election by unlawful means. Jurors then had three alleged “unlawful means” to choose from. One of them involved federal campaign finance violations.

The order prohibits him from publicly critiquing witnesses including Michael Cohen.

Trump called his former fixer “a sleazebag,” adding, “everybody knows that.”
Cohen testified against Trump during the trial, saying his former boss directed him to handle the hush money payments and was aware of all that he was doing.

Trump didn’t use Cohen’s name, saying, “I’m not allowed to use his name because of the gag order.”

Calling Cohen “effective” as a lawyer, he said Cohen “got into trouble because of outside deals” involving taxi cabs.

Trump called the witnesses who testified against him “salacious” and said their words against him demonstrated that the entire case was politically motivated.

“It had nothing to do with a case, but it had to do with politics,” Trump said.

Stormy Daniels, the porn actor at the center of the hush money case against Trump, gave several days worth of testimony that included intimate details of their alleged encounter.

Donald Trump is insisting he wanted to testify — and he could have, had he chosen to do so. All criminal defendants have a constitutional right to testify on their own behalf. By opting not to testify, Trump waived that right.

Trump said he wanted to testify but claimed the judge wanted to go into every detail of the case and that he feared being prosecuted for perjury if he made a verbal misstep.

“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 is repeating unfounded claims that President Joe Biden and the Justice Department influenced his New York prosecution.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a state-level prosecutor. His office, which prosecuted the hush money case, operates independently and is not under the direction of Biden or the federal government.

Trump began his day-after-verdict news conference by launching into a critique of his general election opponent, as well as the “highly conflicted” judge who presided over his historic case.

From Trump Tower, Trump argued that Biden and the “bunch of fascists” who back him are failing to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. But he also marked the moment by, as he has done repeatedly, blaming Judge Juan M. Merchan for “a nasty gag order” that prevented Trump from levying public criticism against witnesses and many others affiliated with his case.

“If they can do this to me they can do this to anyone,” Trump said as he took to the podium.

He has notes with him, two pages written in black Sharpie.

In advance of Trump’s speech to the press, supporters have gathered across the street from Trump Tower.

A giant red “TRUMP OR DEATH” sign is flapping in front of the Prada store.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group swung wildly at the opening bell Friday, falling rapidly after it appeared that the owner of social networking site Truth Social would bounce back despite the former president’s conviction.

After rising more than 2% at the opening of trade Friday, shares slid 7%, about the levels they were trading immediately after the conviction was announced on off-hours trading Thursday evening.

▶ Read more about the DJT stock.

The hush money case, though criticized by some legal experts who called it the weakest of the four prosecutions against Trump, takes on added importance not only because it proceeded to trial first but also because it could be the only one of Trump’s cases to reach a jury before the election.

The other three — local and federal cases in Atlanta and Washington that he conspired to undo the 2020 election, as well as a federal indictment in Florida charging him with illegally hoarding top-secret records — are bogged down by delays or appeals.

▶ Read more about all the investigations Trump faces.

Trump supporters and right-wing pundits have flown and shared images of upside-down flags in protest of the former president’s conviction. At least one was spotted outside Trump Tower Friday morning and elected officials including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene shared the image online Thursday.

The symbol, once a signal of distress for sailors, has come to represent the “Stop the Steal” movement, which falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen. The symbol was also spotted outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s home in Virginia, though Alito said it pertained to a dispute between his wife and his neighbors.

Other incendiary rhetoric on social media referred to the verdict as a declaration of “war” or a sign of the coming of a “civil war.” The words “RIP America” trended on X, formerly known as Twitter, immediately after the verdict.

Trump’s campaign said it has raised a record $34.8 million in small-dollar online contributions off his conviction — nearly double its previous largest haul.

“From just minutes after the sham trial verdict was announced, our digital fundraising system was overwhelmed with support, and despite temporary delays online because of the amount of traffic, President Trump raised $34.8 million dollars from small dollar donors,” said Trump campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles in a statement.

Fundraising emails have employed stark language, including “I am a Political Prisoner” and “JUSTICE IS DEAD IN AMERICA!”

The campaign advisors said nearly 30% of Thursday’s donors were new to the fundraising platform.

Dozens of reporters and TV news crews are huddled in the lobby of Trump Tower ahead of the former president’s planned postconviction remarks at 11 a.m.

It’s the same very 1980s brass-and-rose marble lobby where Trump descended his golden escalator to announce his 2016 campaign nine years ago next month.

Five American flags have been set behind a small lectern where he’ll speak.

Use our interactive to sort through each count Trump is facing and see what it means.

For seven weeks, Donald Trump was on trial in his hometown of New York City as 12 Americans weighed the evidence against him in a hush money case before ultimately voting to convict him.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, brought his 2024 presidential campaign other allies with him.

The scene outside the courthouse also became a spectacle unto itself over the weeks, attracting hordes of news media, displays from some of his fiercest supporters and opponents, and even actor Robert De Niro, who made an appearance on behalf of President Joe Biden’s campaign.

▶ Take a visual look at Trump’s hush money trial.

Donald Trump’s conviction in his New York hush money trial is a stunning development in an already unorthodox presidential election with profound implications for the justice system and perhaps U.S. democracy itself.

But in a deeply divided America, it’s unclear whether Trump’s status as someone with a felony conviction will have any impact at all on the 2024 election.

▶ The Associated Press took a closer look at how his conviction may affect the 2024 presidential race.

Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts marked the end of the former president’s historic hush money trial.

Now comes the sentencing and the prospect of a prison sentence. A lengthy appellate process. And all the while, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee still has to deal with three more criminal cases and a campaign that could see him return to the White House.

▶ Here’s what else you should know about Trump’s conviction.

Several Republican lawmakers reacted with fury to Trump’s felony conviction on Thursday, and rushed to Trump’s defense, questioning the legitimacy of the trial and how it was conducted:

• House Speaker Mike Johnson: Johnson said it was a “shameful day in American history” and the charges were “purely political.”
• Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance: Vance said the verdict was a “disgrace to the judicial system.”
• South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham: Graham, who has been one of Trump’s most frequent allies, said, “This verdict says more about the system than the allegations.”
• Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell: McConnell refrained from attacking the judge or jury, saying the charges “never should have been brought in the first place.”

Many GOP lawmakers, including Johnson, visited the courthouse in New York to support Trump during his criminal trial.

History happened in Donald Trump’s criminal trial just as everyone was getting ready to leave for the day.

▶ Here’s what happened inside the courtroom as Trump learned he had been convicted in his hush money case.

Just one day after the end of his historic hush money trial, Donald Trump is set to hold a news conference at Trump Tower on Friday morning.

Trump became the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes Thursday as a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.