WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers reacted with immediate fury on Thursday as a New York jury convicted former President Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election, speaking out with near unanimity in questioning the legitimacy of the trial and how it was conducted.
The jury found that Trump falsified the records in a scheme to influence his presidential election through hush money payments to a porn actor who had said she had sex with Trump. Few Republicans mentioned the details of the case but many echoed his repeated assertions that it was a “rigged, disgraceful trial.” He is expected to quickly appeal.
There is no evidence that the trial was rigged. Trump's defense has complained about a $15 donation Judge Juan Manuel Merchan made to Biden in 2020 and his daughter's job as a Democratic political consultant, but the judge rejected Trump's lawyers' request for a recusal and said he was certain of his “ability to be fair and impartial."
The verdict made Trump the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes. And it comes as almost all GOP lawmakers in Congress have forcefully rallied behind him in this year's election. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who had distanced himself from the former president after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack of Trump’s supporters, said “this verdict is a disgrace, and this trial should have never happened.”