Trump’s guilty verdict: A stress test for democracy

Historic… unprecedented… and guilty. Couldn’t escape those words last week, after a former U.S. president was convicted of 34 criminal charges in New Yorka city he had long called home.

But beyond all the drama, said CBS News legal contributor Rebecca Roiphe, there was simply a jury of seven men and five women doing their duty — and honoring the adage: “No one is above the law.”

“You can have all kinds of power, you can have all kinds of wealth, but when you’re in that courtroom, you’re just like anyone else,” Roiphe said. “Of course, there are some people who will look at this case and no look at it this way.”

Donald Trump is one of them.

“It was a fraudulent trial,” he said the day after he was found guilty. “We wanted a change of venue where we could have a fair trial. We didn’t get it.”

President Joe Biden, in turn, defended the legal system. “The jury heard five weeks of evidence,” he said Friday. “They found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 criminal counts. Now he will have the opportunity – as he should – to appeal that decision.”

The gravity of this moment is obvious – a stress test for democracy, just as the Trump-Biden race is heating up. Less obvious is what happens next.

For example, can a convicted felon still serve as president? “Yes,” said Roiphe. “We have certain limitations [in the Constitution] in the Presidency, and this is not one of them. … There is nothing that prevents someone from running for president, or being president, as a convicted felon.”

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, days before Republicans nominate him again.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche admits it’s possible his client could be in prison while the Republican National Convention is being held: “That’s something I don’t want to think about,” he said Friday. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. But it’s possible, of course.”

Regardless, the summer – with its debates, conventions and other political fireworks – will likely be a time of Trump complaints.

Trump’s campaign claims to have raised more than $50 million within 24 hours of the guilty verdict. And Trump kept the top Republicans on his side (some appearing in court, with loyal red ribbons).

Author Michael Wolff covered the trial and wrote several books about Trump. “This is a campaign and this is a political career based on conflict, conflict, conflict, conflict,” Wolff said. “Other politicians will flee the conflict. He’s absolutely running in that direction.

“The fact that this person kept going against these things that no one could stand somehow – strangely – makes him heroic to many, many, many, many people,” Wolff said.

For Wolff, this crossroads is a reckoning with Trump — and with the combative New York world of infamous lawyers and fixers, of hush money and tabloids that Trump has now made ours.

Costa asked Wolff: “As a longtime Trump observer and writer, what do you think of him, someone who forged his career in the ’70s and ’80s alongside a New York lawyer like Roy Cohn, now becoming a convicted felon in Lower Manhattan?”

“I mean, it’s almost poetic,” Wolff replied. “If you were a writer and you were writing this story, this is how it could end. The anomaly is that this is not necessarily where it ends, that it could very well end in the White House.”

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Story produced by David Rothman. Editor: Chad Cardin.

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