Evelyn Reynolds

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    Neighbors say Alitos used security detail car to intimidate them after sign dispute

    Neighbors of Samuel Alito and his wife described how a disagreement over political lawn signs put up in the wake of the 2020 presidential election quickly devolved into “unhinged behavior towards a complete stranger” by the supreme court justice’s wife.Emily Baden says she never intended to get into a fight with Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, her powerful neighbors who live on the same suburban cul-de-sac as her mother outside Washington DC.Then a large black car, part of the Alitos’ security detail, started parking in front of her mother’s house instead of theirs, and Baden understood the perils of being an ordinary citizen going up against one of the most powerful men in the country.The two sides do not agree on much, but Baden, a staunch liberal, and Martha-Ann Alito, a staunch conservative, concur that they began exchanging words in late 2020, almost two months after Joe Biden’s election victory over Donald Trump. Soon after, according to Baden, the Alitos’ security detail began parking a car directly in front of her mother’s house – several houses down from its usual spots either directly in front of the Alitos or across the street from them.“This happened a handful of times,” Baden now recalls. “I took that as directly threatening.”Baden and her husband both say that the security detail’s car showed up in front of her mother’s house again two weeks ago, after the New York Times broke the story about an upside-down American flag hanging on the Alitos’ flagpole in the days before Biden’s inauguration – a symbol associated with the January 6 insurrection that sought to prevent Biden from taking office at all.Baden was no longer living with her mother by that point – she is now a mother herself and living on the west coast. Neither she nor her mother were mentioned by name in the initial Times story. Still, she found the message that this sent disturbing.“I couldn’t say who was in the car because of the tinted glass, and nobody ever said anything. I took it as a general threat,” she said. “The message was, we could do terrible things to you, and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When it comes to justices at the supreme court, they make the laws, but the laws don’t apply to them.”Baden’s husband, who did not want to be identified by name, said he, too, remembered a large black security SUV parking in front of their house, most memorably after Martha-Ann Alito confronted the couple in February 2021 and Baden let an expletive fly at the justice’s wife.“Right after, a security vehicle moved in front of our house and stayed for the remainder of the night,” he recalled.The Alitos did not immediately respond to a request from the Guardian for comment.Baden is an unusual witness to the Alito flag controversy and furore it has unleashed, because she never saw the upside-down flag flying outside the Alitos’ house and did not hear about it until the story hit the headlines two weeks ago.When the Times first contacted her, she said she didn’t want to be in any story because she had nothing to add. That changed when Alito put out a statement saying that his wife had briefly hung the flag in response to a neighbor’s use of “objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs”.Baden realised this was a reference to her. It both incensed and frightened her.“He’s lying about many, many things in that statement,” she claims. Contrary to Alito’s assertions, she alleged, it was not true that she had initiated any confrontation. She said it was also untrue that her lawn signs were directed personally at the justice or his wife.In Baden’s version of events, Martha-Ann Alito first approached her to complain about a home-made cardboard sign that said “Bye Don” on one side and “Fuck Trump” on the other – sentiments found on many similar signs around their neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, and in the rest of the country.Alito took further umbrage after January 6 when Baden erected signs that read “Trump Is a Fascist” and “You Are Complicit” – the latter intended, Baden says, as a condemnation of all Trump supporters, not as a message to the Alitos, who had no direct view of it from their house.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe next day, according to Baden, Martha-Ann Alito pulled up in front of their house in her car and glared at her and her partner (now her husband). The security detail started parking outside the house around the same time, and the dispute continued for more than a month, culminating in the swearing incident in mid-February and a police report that the Badens filed right after.“This was unhinged behavior towards a complete stranger, who had done nothing except put up a yard sign,” Baden charged. “I became truly afraid of what they might do.”That fear also made her hesitate about agreeing to be named publicly. She knows how quickly people can be vilified when stepping into a high-profile political controversy, and she has thought of Anita Hill, who tried in vain to stop Clarence Thomas being named to the supreme court in the early 1990s, and of Christine Blasey Ford, who testified against Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings in 2018, also to no avail.“I was scared for myself, for my mother, for my family, for anyone who shares my last name,” Baden said.Then news broke of a second flag affiliated with the “Stop the Steal” movement being flown at a second Alito home, and she felt she had no choice but to speak out.“That other flag sealed the deal for me,” she said. “I thought, if I don’t use my name, I will not be true to myself and my lifelong convictions. I believe in resistance to fascism. My grandpa fought in world war two … he was a person who quite literally fought against fascism.”Her view of Alito was further coloured by the fact that he wrote the majority opinion in the 2022 Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization – the decision that overturned Roe v Wade and ended a constitutional right to an abortion. She happened to be in Virginia when the news broke, and participated in street protests outside the Alitos’ home, at which point her signs (and almost everyone else’s) were indeed personally directed at the justice.Now, she feels compelled to add her voice to the growing calls for Alito to recuse himself from Trump-related cases before the supreme court and is willing to testify before Congress, as Hill and Blasey Ford did before her.“This story is not about me. I didn’t do anything except put a sign in my front yard,” she said. “The story is that one of the most powerful men in the country showed allegiance to an insurrection … I’m horrified by this behaviour, and want to see at least a modicum of accountability.“If I’m coming forward, it is to encourage other people to resist. I want to galvanise people and let them know they have the power. It truly gives me chills to think how close we came to a coup, and Christian fascists taking over our country. [But] this is still a democracy.” More

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    The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s conviction: a criminal unfit to stand or serve | Editorial

    Guilty. The New York jury’s unanimous verdicts on 34 counts mean that Donald Trump is not only the first sitting or former US president to be prosecuted in a criminal trial, but the first to be convicted.Trump was found to have falsified business records to hide $130,000 of hush money paid to cover up a sex scandal he feared might hinder his run in 2016. Before his entry into politics, it would have been taken for granted that such charges would kill a campaign. Yet Trump is running for the White House as a convicted criminal. If he is jailed when he is sentenced in July – which most experts think unlikely – it is assumed that he would continue. If anything, the prospect of such a sentence spurs him on.It is grim testament to his character that in some ways the most startling aspect of testimony in the five‑week trial was about his fear of the electoral impact that the adult film star Stormy Daniels’ allegation of extramarital sex might have. It was a reminder of how far he has lowered the political bar. Eight years on, critics have been forced to acknowledge that no scandal or shame seems to weaken the attachment of his core voters or the craven bond of Republican politicians. Each fresh revelation has seemed to almost reinforce his aura of impregnability to political controversy.This trial too was in some ways grist to his mill, raising funds and firing up supporters. Some said they were more likely to vote for him if he were convicted. He continues to play the martyr: “Our whole country is being rigged right now,” he lied to supporters. He says he will appeal against his “scam” conviction.Yet no one doubts that his anger, and his glum post-verdict demeanour, were real. Polling suggested that some supporters would think twice if there were a conviction. The hearings have cost him time and focus ahead of a closely contested election. With the outcome hanging on turnout and a small number of waverers in a handful of battleground states this November, even marginal effects could prove significant. Joe Biden now has an opportunity – albeit one which must be used carefully, and which will not on its own erase shortcomings within the Democratic campaign.The three criminal cases Trump still faces – over the alleged mishandling of classified documents and attempts to overturn the 2020 election – are graver by far, but are not expected to be heard before election day. While this may not have been the case that his opponents wanted, it has proved that he breaks the law for political advantage. Failing to pursue it for fear that he would exploit the charges would have meant tacitly caving in to his bullyboy tactics.Having wreaked devastation upon US politics, Trump seeks to undermine the rule of law too. He has assailed the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the legal system itself. He broke a gag order 10 times. The damage he has caused must not be underestimated or overlooked. But the judicial process has held.While so many powerful Republican politicians have quailed and fallen into line, 12 ordinary men and women have held him accountable. Their verdict has confirmed once more that this man is unfit to run the country. Their peers should take heed when they issue their own verdict at the ballot box in November. More

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    Trump is guilty on all counts. So what happens next? – podcast

    Today, we are sharing Politics Weekly America’s latest episode with Today in Focus listeners. Donald Trump has made history again, becoming the first US president, sitting or former, to be a convicted criminal. Late on Thursday a New York jury found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal. Within minutes of leaving the courtroom, Trump said he would appeal. On a historic night for American politics, Jonathan Freedland and Sam Levine look at what the verdict will mean – for Trump himself, and for the election in November. Archive: CNN, CBS, MSNBC, ITV, NBC More

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    So Trump moves closer to jail and nearer to the White House. This is our world in 2024 | Marina Hyde

    No rest for political cartographers. It turns out that what lay beyond America’s uncharted waters was some more uncharted waters. The unanimous verdict in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial found the former president guilty, making him the first US president to be convicted of a crime. Forgive me: 34 crimes. A potential bar to security clearance, voting and owning a gun – but not, apparently, a bar to running for president. “I am a political prisoner,” ran an instant campaign fundraising message from Trump, probably typed on the same gold toilet he once pretty much ran the world off.And might well again. Previous polls have indicated some Trump voters would switch in the event of a guilty verdict, but this morning the betting markets had Trump’s chances above 50% for the first time. On the other hand, if criminal trial verdicts going the wrong way for you is such great news, how come Trump is trying so hard to stall the other three cases he’s facing? By way of a reminder, those involve mishandling classified documents, trying to change the outcome of the election, and fomenting the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. He’s already been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation in another trial last year, and impeached twice. Take in his thousands of business-related court cases and he’s a one-man law degree.That the import of Trump’s conviction is even debated highlights the extraordinary loss of ideals we have lived through in a single decade. It is simply impossible to imagine a world where, even 10 years ago, any president being convicted of 34 crimes would be regarded – including by many of his detractors – as quite possibly good for his electoral prospects.The ability to make people believe the opposite of the things they see with their own eyes is not a new political trick, and even the version that defines this looking-glass era was perfected by Vladimir Putin long before Trump ever produced his own knock-off model. Perhaps Trump’s most original achievement is to harness conspiracism, one of the great currents of the age, in his favour. I will never get over the vast irony of the fact that conspiracy theorists love this guy – when he embodies and proves so many of their worst fears. He ran, and may run again, a government that lied to them. He was head of a state that disappeared key documents, evidently into some of his own bathrooms. Every day he pulls a political false-flag attack of one kind or another. He was, and is, involved in any number of conspiracies. He really was out to get them. Yet their paranoia bell doesn’t go off.So free-speech nuts decline to see that this is a case in which Trump clearly sought to suppress free speech and consequently democracy. This is what authoritarians do. They decide what the “truth” is going to be, and they manipulate events into making it so. Dissent is silenced. The people are judged too worthless and troublesome to be allowed to make up their own minds (all populists actually hate their people, even as they tell them they are just like one of them). Ideals we might consider the cornerstone of a democracy – free speech, the rule of law – are regarded as things that need to be got around, subverted and ultimately crushed. Democracy, really, is the enemy. Control is the goal.And if you’re good enough at it, as Trump and Putin surely are, your former critics become your fawning court, to the point that no one can even imagine your successor, certainly unless you anoint him (and it will be a him). To watch previous Republican scourges of Trump such as JD Vance or Marco Rubio fawning around him is to imagine a mirror of events that played out inside the Kremlin many years ago. And, indeed, during a succession of earlier Russian presidencies. Even Nikki Haley has recently folded and says she’ll vote for him, and she didn’t even need to be tacitly threatened with nerve-agent poisoning to do it. A bunch of Wall Street big hitters have come around – maybe Trump will gift them some mining concessions or an oil company, like proper little oligarchs.Right after the verdict, his ghastly strongman son Donald Jr popped up to declare, again, that America was turning “into a third-world shithole”. To which the reaction of many oversea observers will have been: you said it, mate. Good of you to be so open, at least.Naturally, I am not being entirely serious. But for many around the globe, the former US president has become like the country’s gun laws – a situation of such glaringly objective negativity that they honestly don’t need some angry native to explain to them how actually it’s all an aspirational local custom that they, an outsider, could never understand. Most people feel they understand it pretty well. No country is immune from making itself a joke – certainly we Brits have had a few really determined goes at it down the years – and the US is currently the world’s leading exporter of mirthless laughs.Even those die in the throat when you consider that far from having been always there, full American democracy is less than 60 years old. And if its betting markets think that a former president being convicted of multiple crimes is a boost to his prospects, then the world must be drawn to the conclusion that it is currently very sick, and quite possibly without health insurance. You can only wish it well.
    Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist More

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    At long last, ‘Teflon Don’ Trump couldn’t unstick himself from the legal system | Margaret Sullivan

    For decades, he skated. Nothing seemed to stick to the Teflon-coated businessman-turned-president. The guy who didn’t pay his bills, who constantly lied, who mocked a disabled journalist, who insulted a Gold Star family, who bragged about grabbing women by their private parts, who praised dictators, who urged a violent mob to overturn an election, who was unperturbed as his own vice-president was threatened with hanging.Yes, he skated – through two impeachments, through countless investigations and accusations, and through so much chaos that responsible US citizens became almost numb and hopeless.And then came Thursday afternoon, when 12 regular New Yorkers – against the odds and against the conventional wisdom – simply did their civic duty and convicted Donald Trump.Unanimously. On all counts. And quickly. No hung jury, no hesitation – their deliberations lasted not weeks, but mere hours – and no mixed decisions.It took the US jury system to finally bring some accountability, with quite a bit of help from an adult film actor, a sleazy tabloid executive, and the ex-president’s former fixer, a notorious liar himself.In a world so divided that our political tribes can’t seem to agree on a single fact, we now have one that is impossible to argue with: Trump is a convicted felon, the first US president to be convicted of a crime – the crime of falsifying documents to cover up a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election, lest she tell her tale of their tryst.That much we know. That much can’t be denied, no matter the bitter whining on Fox News or the inevitable claims of a unfair legal system and a corrupt judge.And to those millions who have watched his destructive and sordid career for years, the jury’s decision in a New York courtroom brought a moment both regrettable and righteous.Regrettable, of course, because it’s all so sordid and shameful that this con man was able to operate with impunity.And righteous because somehow the truth won out in this lower Manhattan courtroom and because – quite simply – Trump deserves it.What we don’t know is if it will matter to his bid for the presidency in November.If you believe public opinion polls – it’s wise to be skeptical – it probably will make a difference. Not to his most loyal followers, of course, who have been taught to believe only him. These are the followers who, Trump himself famously said, wouldn’t change their votes if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue.But to some number of reasonable Americans, it will matter. They will decide that they’d rather not put a convicted felon back in the White House, where he never belonged to begin with.A new Marist poll released this week estimated that two-thirds of voters said a felony conviction wouldn’t change their minds. But 17% of the respondents (presumably representing millions of Americans) allowed that they would be less likely to vote for a convicted Trump.The rightwing media, of course, will do what it can to save him. It’s already working on the case. In the initial hour or so after the verdict, the pundit and former prosecutor Jeanine Pirro, visibly indignant, told the Fox News faithful that “this is warfare,” and “God help America after what I’ve seen in the last two weeks.”And Trump predictably blasted the trial as “rigged” and “disgraceful”, having said just on Wednesday that even the sainted Mother Teresa couldn’t have survived its horrors.But two facts remain. Trump is now a convicted felon. And there is – after his endless and appalling parade of malfeasance – some semblance of justice.
    Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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    Donald Trump hits out at guilty verdict as Biden campaign says ‘no one above the law’ – live

    While Joe Biden himself declined to comment on the verdict, his campaign sent out an email stating “no one is above the law”.“In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law. Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain,” wrote Michael Tyler, Biden’s communications director.“But today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.”Ian Sams, spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office, said in a statement: “We respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment.”Read more on reactions to yesterday’s verdict:A PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist found that 67% of voters said a conviction would make no difference for them in November’s presidential election. Meanwhile, about 25% of Republicans said they would be even more likely to vote for Donald Trump if he were found guilty.A Quinnipiac University national survey had similar findings, with 62% of voters saying a conviction would make no difference to how they were voting in November.The Guardian’s David Smith has more here:The campaign for Donald Trump was quick to fundraise off the back of the guilty verdict, with an email to his supporters declaring him a “political prisoner”.The email questions whether “this is the end of America?” before saying that Trump had been convicted “in a RIGGED political Witch Hunt trial: I DID NOTHING WRONG!”Meanwhile, Politico is reporting that the Trump campaign is telling down ballot Republicans to back off of fundraising for themselves off the former president’s convictions – because they believe the trial to be a fundraising boon for the Trump campaign and don’t want other Republicans to siphon from the pot.“Any Republican elected official, candidate or party committee siphoning money from President Trump’s donors are no better than Judge Merchan’s daughter,” Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita told Politico. “We’re keeping a list, we’ll be checking it twice and we aren’t in the spirit of Christmas.”Trump’s team had long argued that judge Juan Merchan had a conflict of interest in overseeing the the trial because his daughter, Loren, is a political consultant whose firm has worked for prominent Democrats including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Judicial ethics experts and the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics determined that her work for Democrats was not grounds for recusal.As expected, Donald Trump reacted defiantly to a New York jury finding him guilty on 34 counts of felony falsification of business records.“This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt,” Trump said at the courthouse after the verdict was read. “This was a rigged trial, a disgrace.”He decried judge Juan Merchan for not allowing him a change of venue, and accused Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who brought the case against him, as “a Soros-backed D.A.” – while a financial link exists between Bragg and George Soros, the billionaire Democratic megadonor, Soros did not directly give money to Bragg’s campaign A spokesman for Soros previously told The New York Times that the two men had never met.Trump maintained that he was a “very innocent man” and that “we didn’t do a thing wrong”.“The real verdict is going to be November 5 by the people,” Trump said. “They know what happened here. Everybody knows what happened here.”Cheers – and moans – around New York in response to a jury finding Donald Trump guilty:Donald Trump is set to be sentenced on 11 July, after being found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records. While the decision rests entirely with Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing the case, experts say Trump is unlikely to receive prison time: the crime he has been found guilty of is a non-violent paper crime, and he is a first-time offender.Either way, yesterday’s verdict does not disqualify him as a presidential candidate, nor does it bar him from again sitting in the Oval Office.Read more here:In 2016, Donald Trump campaigned against Hillary Clinton to chants of “lock her up”, threatening to appoint a special prosecutor to go after her for use of a personal email account while she was secretary of state (an FBI investigation that year deemed that while Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information, they should not face criminal charges).After yesterday’s verdict, Clinton took the stage at the Vital Voices Global Festival in Washington with a broad smile. She doesn’t even say Trump’s name, but asked the audience: “Anything going on today?” The crowd responded with raucous cheers.On Instagram, Clinton posted an image on Instagram of a mug with her cartoon outline sipping from a mug and the phrase “turns out she was right about everything” on it.The guilty verdict made the front page of newspapers across the world – Donald Trump is now the first US president, former or current, to be convicted of a crime.In New York, The New York Post – a tabloid that has long been loyal to Trump – decried the verdict as an injustice.Meanwhile, the city’s paper of record, The New York Times, had this to say:See more front pages here:While Joe Biden himself declined to comment on the verdict, his campaign sent out an email stating “no one is above the law”.“In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law. Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain,” wrote Michael Tyler, Biden’s communications director.“But today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.”Ian Sams, spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office, said in a statement: “We respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment.”Read more on reactions to yesterday’s verdict:Good morning.Yesterday, a New York jury found Donald Trump guilty of of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, an unprecedented moment in US history.The former president has decried the trial as “rigged”, calling it a “disgrace”.“Twelve everyday jurors vowed to make a decision based on the evidence and the law and the evidence and the law alone,” said Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg. “Their deliberations led them to a unanimous conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant Donald J Trump is guilty.”He added: “While this defendant might be unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial and ultimately today this verdict in the same manner as every other case.”We’ll have more updates and analysis as the day unfolds. More

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    Will Trump, a convicted felon, be able to vote for himself in November?

    Despite his 34 felony convictions, Donald Trump will likely still be able to cast a vote for himself in November because of Florida and New York’s voting rights restoration laws.Florida, where Trump has his primary residence, allows people convicted of felonies to vote depending on the law in the state where they are convicted.New York is one of 23 states where people convicted of a felony can vote, even if they are on parole or probation, as long as they are not incarcerated.“A felony conviction in another state makes a person ineligible to vote in Florida only if the conviction would make the person ineligible to vote in the state where the person was convicted,” Florida’s department of state website reads.But Florida’s law is confusing, especially after state voters passed amendment 4 in 2018, which restored the right to vote to most people with felony convictions who have completed all terms of their sentence. The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which led the campaign for amendment 4, has sued over the process, but dropped a lawsuit against the state earlier this month after the department of state said it would hold a workshop to update the process for people with felony convictions to learn about their voting eligibility.Trump could lose his right to vote if he were incarcerated on 5 November, but legal experts say it is unlikely he will be sentenced to jail time. There will also likely be a lengthy appeal which could extend past election day.“We have to wait to see what happens with Trump’s sentencing and possible appeal in New York to see what happens with [his] voter eligibility,” said Neil Volz, deputy director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. “That said, we are in uncharted territory when it comes to people with convictions being able to vote.”“After New York goes through their process, whether President Trump can vote with a felony conviction will depend on what the state of Florida does,” he added. “Our belief is that no one should be above the law or below the law when it comes to voter eligibility for people with convictions, and that everyone should operate under the same set of standards.”If Trump did lose his right to vote, he could always apply for rights restoration with Florida’s clemency board, which is made up of Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, and his cabinet. The board is scheduled to meet three more times in 2024. DeSantis endorsed Trump when he dropped out of the presidential race in January. More

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    ‘Karma always get you’: New Yorkers react to verdict in Trump criminal trial

    The aftermath of the conviction of Donald Trump on 34 felony counts played out amid scenes of stress, jubilation and shock in Manhattan – the slice of New York that first made the former US president into a global celebrity and has now declared one of its most famous sons a guilty criminal.Police cruisers tore downtown after jurors announced they’d reached a verdict in Trump’s hush-money trial, and many New Yorkers had been glued to their phones waiting for the decision to be relayed. Mayor Eric Adams tried to reassure citizens that authorities were prepared for unrest.“I guess we all get what we deserve and this man is just a low-life,” said Joseph McGee, 62, who was standing on the corner of 6th Avenue and 8th Street. “Karma always get you. If it wasn’t for this, it’s for everything else he’s done. It’s a real good thing.”Others were less sure. “This is going to hand him the election, no question,” said Ashish Bajha from Michigan.View image in fullscreen“I work in Dayton, Ohio, and you should hear what they say out there – they think it’s a political-bias case. It’s polarizing to an already polarized base and the unfortunate part is Biden’s support is already quite low. They’re not getting Biden’s base out with this, they’re getting Trump’s,” Bajha added.Trump was not without support. In the melting pot of New York City, though overwhelmingly Democratic, there are people of all political stripes – both visitors and residents. And all opinions could be found.In bustling and touristy Times Square, Jai Shannon, 33, said there was the belief in her community in Florida that Trump was set up by the system. “He’s being cheated,” she said. “He’s being made an example of.”Jerry Sharkey III, from Harlem, who had been at a probation hearing in the same criminal courthouse where Trump’s trial was winding up, was a firm fan of the real estate mogul turned reality TV star turned US president.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreen“I see this as a political trial, but they can spin it a lot of different ways. I’m a Trump supporter no matter what, and being in the Manhattan courthouse has nothing to do with being the president,” Sharkey said.Many others offered a more typical New York Democrat response.“I was cheering. I was thrilled by the verdict,” said Lisa Taylor, 49. “I just wish it would keep him from being re-elected. Surely, the Republicans are scrambling now to be, like, what do we do? But given their history I’m not optimistic they’ll do anything.”Opposite the Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, where supporters and opponents alike had gathered, both cheers and boos were thrown up when a newly guilty Trump arrived back from the courthouse and pumped his fist in the air.A man who gave his name as Sherwin said the case was about the facts and facts were what Trump had been convicted on. But he acknowledged that it was unlikely to be interpreted through anything other than a political lens.View image in fullscreen“America is flooded with division and we can’t seem to be united on anything, and this kind of makes it more obvious. People who hate Trump are really happy, and people who love Trump are really angry,” he said.A pair of Belgian tourists said it was the same situation in their country, with a potentially divisive election being held next month. One said: “The question we ask is, what, can’t they find anyone better? You’ve got two 80-year-olds running for office.”Another visitor, from the Netherlands, said she considered Trump “the most improper man ever”.View image in fullscreen“How he thinks about women, he thinks he can do anything, lie about everything and it doesn’t matter,” she said. A trio of students stopped by to offer comment. “He embezzled, he bribed, he’s mega-racist,” said Dee. “On top of that he’s just fucking weird.”New Yorker Kimia Faribozz, 26, said she doubted Trump’s conviction would make much difference. “After the impeachments, he just kind of did his thing, so I don’t know if this is going to affect him. I feel like people older than me are more neo-liberal and think this is a huge movement that he now can’t vote in Florida but can still run, but people closer to my age are a little more pessimistic.”View image in fullscreenOn the corner of 51st and Broadway, Times Square entertainer Timothy Drayton said it would never happen that authorities would let a former president serve a jail sentence.“They will not let that happen for the generations that came before or after them. America doesn’t want that. He said: ‘Make America great again’ – not the political parties. They’re not looking at the people, and the people aren’t going to go for that because it will destroy America’s whole outlook on the presidency,” Drayton said. More