Donald Trump verdicts may be most significant ever delivered by US jury
There’s guilty and there’s not guilty.
Then there’s ‘whatever’, the verdict that Donald Trump had already bagged long before a New York court delivered its judgement.
Beyond the breakdown of a 12-member jury panel, the portion of America that will shrug its shoulders at this case’s conclusion means Donald Trump has numbers he can work with, politically. For now, at least.
Time will tell how the status change to “criminal” affects his bid to return to the White House. Notably, polls indicate it will go down badly with independent voters.
For his opponents, it will need to – because, in six weeks of a criminal trial, it didn’t.
Trump guilty latest: Ex-US president says he is a ‘very innocent man’
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Moment historic decision confirmed
For all the talk of due process having due impact on a presidential campaign, of evidence laid bare to land a political death warrant, the Trump campaign remains alive and kicking.
Head-to-head polls with Joe Biden still show a tight contest, with Trump ahead in key swing states. The trial has also boosted his campaign war chest – his fund-raising was greater than Joe Biden in the month of April, a 2024 first.
Whilst this trial has been a thunderous legal watershed for the United States, there are reasons why it hasn’t reverberated as it might, and as Trump’s opponents would have hoped.
Stormy Daniels. Pic: AP
Of the four criminal trials he faces, it was the least serious. Placed against the heavyweight charges around the mishandling of classified government documents and efforts to subvert democracy, the New York crimes had a featherweight feel.
It was rather more than the “bookkeeping error” that Trump would have had us believe but there are factors beyond his characterisation that minimise impact.
The prosecutors’ witness list was populated by unsympathetic characters to whom you wouldn’t hand your house keys.
Michael Cohen, aka star witness, presented his own story of theft, dishonesty and tax evasion. Then there was David Pecker, the slippery tabloid rascal who brought us headlines like “Bungling Surgeon Ben Carson Left Sponge in Patient’s Brain”.
They were central to a prosecution case wrapped in a parcel of rogues and it weakened the ‘good versus evil’ narrative that sharpens a public’s response.
Read more:
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Can Trump still be president after being convicted?
There was also the matter of trial fatigue, before it even got underway. The charges, the witness evidence and the response of the accused had all been aired loudly and often over months leading up to the trial itself.
As much as five weeks of evidence provided a gripping insight, we had heard the headlines before. The cases for the prosecution and defence were pre-cast in the public consciousness and so, largely, were conclusions around guilt and innocence.
Then there were the noises off. Time spent in the vicinity of courtroom number 1530 in Lower Manhattan was time spent listening to Donald Trump campaigning in the corridors of the court building, with a supporting cast addressing the media outside.
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‘This is a rigged trial’
Suburban vehicles and Secret Service transported the modern Republican Party’s great & good from Capitol Hill in daily convoys to loudhailer a backing chorus of ‘sham trial, weaponised justice department and political witch hunt.’
It was a political wall of sound designed to drown out the business of the court on a given day, every day. They weren’t the headline act in this corner of Lower Manhattan but they were headline enough to influence the story in its telling.
Trump supporters outside court. Pic: Reuters
So, what story will America be telling when the dust settles on this, the only criminal trial Donald Trump is likely to face before the November election?
Will voters be discussing Donald Trump? Definitely.
Will they be poring over the detail and significance of a felony conviction? Probably.
Will there be a lingering sense of shock and awe at court’s evidence and jury’s verdict? Almost certainly not.
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What happens next for Donald Trump?
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He’s already been convicted in civil court of fraud and been found liable for sexual assault. The judge in the sexual assault case called it “rape”.
If Donald Trump was in prison, he’d be segregated for his own safety, and yet, in the general population he’s positioned well for a return to the presidency.
It is the curious context for this court case and its aftermath. Whatever the difference a criminal conviction makes, the sense of ‘whatever’ might mean it makes no difference at all.
At least 51 people have died after heavy rain caused flash flooding, with water bursting from the banks of the Guadalupe River in Texas.
The overflowing water began sweeping into Kerr County and other areas around 4am local time on Friday, killing at least 43 people in the county.
This includes at least 15 children and 28 adults, with five children and 12 adults pending identification, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said at a news conference.
In nearby Kendall County, one person has died. At least four people were killed in Travis County, while at least two people died in Burnet County. Another person has died in the city of San Angelo in Tom Green County.
People comfort each other in Kerrville, Texas. Pic: Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via AP
Large piles of debris in Kerrville, Texas, following the flooding. Pic: Reuters//Marco Bello
An unknown number of people remain missing, including 27 girls from Camp Mystic in Kerr County, a Christian summer camp along the Guadalupe River.
Rescuers have already saved hundreds of people and would work around the clock to find those still unaccounted for, Texas governor Greg Abbott said.
But as rescue teams are searching for the missing, Texas officials are facing scrutiny over their preparations and why residents and summer camps for children that are dotted along the river were not alerted sooner or told to evacuate.
AccuWeather said the private forecasting company and the National Weather Service (NWS) sent warnings about potential flash flooding hours before the devastation, urging people to move to higher ground and evacuate flood-prone areas.
Debris on the banks of the Guadalupe River in Hunt. Pic: AP Photo/Julio Cortez
An overturned vehicle is caught in debris along the Guadalupe River. Pic: AP
The NWS later issued flash flood emergencies – a rare alert notifying of imminent danger.
“These warnings should have provided officials with ample time to evacuate camps such as Camp Mystic and get people to safety,” AccuWeather said in a statement that called Texas Hill County one of the most flash-flood-prone areas of the US because of its terrain and many water crossings.
But one NWS forecast earlier in the week had called for up to six inches of rain, said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management.”It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw,” he said.
Officials said they had not expected such an intense downpour of rain, equivalent to months’ worth in a few short hours, insisting that no one saw the flood potential coming.
One river near Camp Mystic rose 22ft in two hours, according to Bob Fogarty, meteorologist with the NWS’s Austin/San Antonio office. The gauge failed after recording a level of 29.5ft.
A wall is missing on a building at Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas. Pic: AP/Julio Cortez
Bedding items are seen outside sleeping quarters at Camp Mystic. Pic: AP/Julio Cortez
A Sheriff’s deputy pauses while searching for the missing in Hunt, Texas.Pic: AP/Julio Cortez
“People, businesses, and governments should take action based on Flash Flood Warnings that are issued, regardless of the rainfall amounts that have occurred or are forecast,” Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at AccuWeather, said in a statement.
“We know we get rain. We know the river rises,” said Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s top elected official. “But nobody saw this coming.”
Judge Kelly said the county considered a flood warning system along the Guadalupe River that would have functioned like a tornado warning siren about six or seven years ago, before he was elected, but that the idea never got off the ground because “the public reeled at the cost”.
A drone view of Comfort, Texas. Pic: Reuters
Officials comb through the banks of the Guadalupe River in Hunt, Texas. Pic: AP/Julio Cortez
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was asked during a news conference on Saturday whether the flash flood warnings came through quickly enough: “We know that everyone wants more warning time, and that is why we are working to upgrade the technologies that have been neglected for far too long.”
Presidential cuts to climate and weather organisations have also been criticised in the wake of the floods after Donald Trump‘s administration ordered 800 job cuts at the science and climate organisation NOAA, the parent organisation of the NWS, which predicts and warns about extreme weather like the Texas floods.
A 30% cut to its budget is also in the pipeline, subject to approval by Congress.
Read more from Sky News:
Elon Musk says he’s created his own political party
Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ passes final hurdle in Congress
Professor Costa Samaras, who worked on energy policy at the White House under President Joe Biden, said NOAA had been in the middle of developing new flood maps for neighbourhoods and that cuts to NOAA were “devastating”.
“Accurate weather forecasts matter. FEMA and NOAA matter. Because little girls’ lives matter,” said Frank Figliuzzi, a national security and intelligence analyst at Sky’s US partner organisation NBC News.
Elon Musk says he has created a new political party – the America Party –
after asking his followers if he should do so in an online poll.
It follows his public falling out with Republican President Donald Trump.
On Friday, the billionaire had asked his followers on X whether a new US political party should be created.
On Saturday evening he wrote on the same platform: “By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!
“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy.
“Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”
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Trump threatens to ‘put DOGE’ on Musk
The world’s richest man made the announcement just one day after President Trump signed a tax-cut and spending bill into law on Friday, which Musk had fiercely opposed.
Musk had previously said we would form and fund a new political party to unseat lawmakers who supported the bill.
From bromance to bust-up
The Tesla boss backed Trump’s election campaign with more than a quarter of a billion dollars, later rewarded with a high profile role running the newly created department of government efficiency (DOGE).
But observers of the two men, both with huge wealth and reputations, wondered how long the bromance would last.
Donald Trump gave Musk a warm send-off in the Oval Office in May. Pic: Reuters
In May Musk left the role, still on good terms with Trump but criticising key parts of his legislative agenda.
After that, the attacks ramped up, with Musk slamming the sweeping tax and spending bill as a “disgusting abomination” and Trump hitting back in a barbed tit-for-tat.
Trump earlier this week threatened to cut off the billion-dollar federal subsidies that flow to Musk’s companies, and said he would even consider deporting him.
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