When a jury of his peers found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush money criminal trial May 30, America broke new ground – and not for the better.
Whether you like it or not, the unprecedented and historic verdict makes Donald Trump the first former president in U.S. history to be convicted of a felony.
So, now what?
That’s the real question and challenge that our nation now faces. Of course, some of the answers to “what happens next” are relatively clear because of the structure of the laws in the state of New York.
First, Trump must be sentenced and the judge has several options in that regard. Then, Trump can choose to appeal the conviction – and you’d have to be living alone on a desert island not to know that he certainly will.
While even young children learn, usually even before they begin school, that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, Trump doesn’t seem to have learned that lesson. In fact, for the former president, who has established a pattern for appealing any decision that he finds unfavorable, losing is not an option – at least not one that he is willing to gracefully accept.
For example, as we witnessed with shock and in utter disbelief a few years ago, on January 6, 2021, Trump routinely lays down the gauntlet in the face of potential defeat. It seems that he, like Captain Kirk and the crew on the Starship Enterprise, is willing “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
In preparation for the filing of his appeal which will undoubtedly occur in July following his sentencing, and to bolster his chances to be reelected president in November, Trump has already pulled out one of his favorite offenses from his very thick playbook. Instead of admitting that he did anything wrong and accepting the decision of the jury and the judge, he is spinning a new narrative – one almost entirely based on fiction with few verifiable facts. It’s a fairy tale but he wants us to believe it’s his in progress autobiography.
If the reports about his record-breaking fundraising efforts that occurred last weekend following his being found guilty are accurate, then it seems a lot of people have already bought into his fairy tale – he is the victim and “the world” – at least the “radical left” is out to get him.
We do not celebrate the former president being found guilty of his crimes. But we are all, supposedly, bound by and subject to the same laws in America.
But make no mistake and do not put your head in the sand. We know that Trump has options in his playbook that few of us, certainly no one of color, have any chance of invoking.
Trump has said that the real verdict will come in November at the polls, but the fact is, Trump is now a convicted felon. That cannot be erased.
Still, you have to wonder, what kind of country do we live in when a convicted felon can run for and, if they win, serve as president, when in any other circumstance, a person convicted of a felony cannot apply for a student loan, cannot live in public housing, cannot exercise their constitutional right to vote, or be hired for a job in the federal government.
Now, that’s what you call privilege.
Reprinted from the Washington Informer
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