Will Trump Run As a Felon
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The New York Times
The witness list is winding down. Closing statements are expected early next week. Then a Manhattan jury will gather in the first criminal trial of a former president to determine whether Donald J. Trump will campaign this fall as a convicted felon.
The political impact of one of the most consequential jury deliberations in the nation’s history is far from predictable.
“Who knows?” said Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who has been a longtime Trump critic. “The first casualty of the I’m-right-you’re-evil politics of today is institutional credibility. We’re not in the politics of accepting impartial facts anymore.”
But whether the verdict becomes a political turning point or not, it will be a major moment in the race.
The case is the only one of Mr. Trump’s four indictments expected to come to trial and a conclusion before Election Day, even if the charges of falsifying financial records related to a hush-money payment made to a porn star do not match the gravity of the indictments accusing Mr. Trump of trying to thwart the peaceful transfer of power in 2020.
There is little doubt that Mr. Trump’s base is unlikely to abandon him now. Less clear is how swing voters or some of the traditional Democratic constituencies — younger, Black and Hispanic voters — who have expressed diminished support for Mr. Biden lately, and even flirted with Mr. Trump, would process a guilty verdict.
“We’ve looked at a lot of polling that indicates a good chunk of voters would move away from Trump if he’s convicted,” said Jim Margolis, a veteran Democratic strategist and ad maker. “I hope that turns out to be true. But if past is prologue, I don’t think we count on that happening.”
Mr. Trump’s political playbook ahead of the verdict is so worn as to be predictable.
His experience enduring multiple investigations, civil trials and two impeachments has provided a template for how he will declare victory, in the case of acquittal or a hung jury, over a deep state that was out to get him but failed. It is also the road map for how, if found guilty, he will try to undermine the legitimacy of the prosecution as a partisan sham engineered to undercut his candidacy, a message that he and allies have hammered for months.
In Trumpian shorthand, based on his previous statements, it will be a “total exoneration” if not guilty and “election interference” if convicted.
In a statement, Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, said Mr. Trump’s team would “fight and crush the Biden Trial Hoaxes all across the country.”
The Biden campaign has largely steered clear of speaking directly about the trial, avoiding providing any fodder to the G.O.P. claims, made without evidence, that his administration was behind the New York case. But his political operation, which declined to comment, winked at the trial last week, selling shirts after Mr. Biden proposed debates that read “Free on Wednesdays,” the weekday that the trial is paused.
But the Trump campaign, with a flair for the dramatic — and a limited travel schedule, owing to the trial — has scheduled a large rally in the Bronx on Thursday, the same day it is possible a jury could deliver a verdict, which could create a combustible situation for a country where violence has become an ugly part of the political landscape.
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