American voters will deliver the final verdict on Trump

With unanimous "guilty" verdicts handed down by the New York jury on all 34 charges against him, Donald Trump becomes the first former US president to have a criminal conviction.

- MARY DEJEVSKY

Were he to win the presidency in November with the conviction still standing, he would also be the first to enter the White House as someone the Americans term a “felon”.

Trump can rail as he likes. And he did, hard on the heels of the verdict, lambasting the judge as “corrupt”, the trial as “rigged” and the whole process as being engineered by the Biden administration to keep him out of the White House.

But the speed of the jury’s decision and the sweeping nature of the verdict will be hailed by his opponents as proof, were any more needed, of his unfitness for office. A statement put out by President Biden’s campaign within minutes of the verdict said just that, emphasising at the same time that it meant no one was above the law.

These are undoubtedly plus points for the administration and for Joe Biden’s re-election bid. Whether Trump’s conviction will translate into any more votes for Biden in November, however, is another matter. First, Trump is almost certain to appeal, although there may not be time for it to be heard before the election. Second, Americans seem to have made up their minds about Trump – for and against – long before this trial.

But third because, as with quite a few of Trump’s statements, including some of his least diplomatic utterances as president – remember him ridiculing North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, about the comparative sizes of their nuclear buttons? – there is some truth to what he says.