Regardless of the jury's verdict in Donald Trump's trial on corporate fraud charges in New York, one outcome is predictable: The former president will react with defiance and denial, along with a declaration of victory if he is not found guilty on all charges. .
A more important effect is almost as predictable: The verdict will not have much impact on his chances of winning the presidential election.
Even a guilty plea to tangled charges that Trump committed business fraud to hide money payments to an adult film actress will likely have only a minor effect on his standing in the eyes of most voters.
A conviction, which the former president would almost certainly appeal, will not prevent him from remaining in the race. And if he wins the election, he has a good chance of avoiding serious sanctions, at least while he is in office.
Trump faces four possible verdicts: guilty on all charges, a split decision, a hung jury or acquittal.
GUILTY — It won't be easy to turn a conviction on all 34 charges into a victory, but there are many ways Trump can mitigate the consequences. He will continue to claim that the charges were flimsy and that the process was rigged against him. And if he appeals the verdict, that will have two effects: It will almost certainly keep him out of jail until long after Election Day, and it will allow him to argue (correctly) that a conviction cannot be considered final while it is in effect. challenge.
DIVIDED DECISION — If Trump is found guilty of some charges but not others, he can be relied upon to declare it a moral victory. He will almost certainly appeal each and every conviction and argue that the confusing outcome shows that the charges against him were weak from the start.
HUNG JURY — Only one of the 12 jurors is needed to prevent a jury from returning a verdict: a “hung jury,” which usually results in a mistrial. If the jury can't reach a decision, Trump will rejoice that not even a jury of Manhattanites in one of the country's most liberal jurisdictions found him guilty — another declaration of moral victory.
ABSOLUTION —This would be a total victory. The candidate would claim that this shows that he has always been right and that his opponents have unfairly “weaponized” the judicial system against him.
Why do I say that even a guilty verdict won't affect Trump's electoral prospects? Because that's what the smartest political pollsters I know, both Republicans and Democrats, say.
“A conviction in this case is unlikely to play a major role” in the election, said Democratic strategist Mark Mellman. “It is possible that the polls will vibrate and then return to where they were. And there may not be any flutter.”
“The most likely impact of a guilty verdict is negligible,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres agreed.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll last month found that 16% of current Trump voters said they would reconsider supporting him if he were convicted in the New York case, and another 4% said they would definitely stop supporting him. But pollsters warned that voters are generally bad at predicting how they would react to hypothetical future events.
In 1998, Mellman noted, many Democrats told pollsters that they thought then-President Clinton should resign if he was accused of lying about a sexual relationship with a White House intern. But when the Republican-led House of Representatives impeached Clinton, his voters stuck with him and his popularity soared.
Trump has spent months attacking the legitimacy of the criminal cases against him, preparing his supporters, in effect, to ignore a guilty verdict.
And he has proven, time and time again, that constant repetition can sway public opinion in his favor.
Case in point: Trump's insistence that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. A year ago, the Monmouth University poll found that 68% of Republicans said they believed President Biden won the election through fraud. In February, with Trump campaigning tirelessly on his false election claims, that figure rose to 75%.
“We've seen, for eight years, a series of events that caused people to say, 'Surely this time, Trump will lose support.' But he never really does it,” Ayres said.
As for undecided voters, there are still five months of campaigning left. Voters who haven't made a decision are unlikely to do so in November based on a verdict on charges of corporate fraud (a verdict that, at worst, will be appealed) that was issued in May.
Trump has already achieved at least one major victory. Six months ago, he faced four serious criminal cases, any of which could have derailed his presidential campaign: a federal case stemming from the invasion of the Capitol by his supporters on January 6, 2021; a federal case on charges of illegally retaining highly classified documents; a case of election interference in Georgia; and the New York corporate fraud case.
Now he has managed to postpone a final reckoning in all four until long after the election.
Delays do not make charges go away.
But if Trump wins the election, he can order the Justice Department to stop the two federal cases. And under most legal precedents, state courts would stay prosecutions of him in New York and Georgia while he serves as president. If he wins in November and completes a full term, that means he will not face prosecution before 2029, when he will be 82 years old.
In short, no matter how the trial in New York concludes, Trump will survive to fight another day, and perhaps even to serve another four years as president.
It has often been noted that it is unprecedented for a former president to face criminal charges. It is equally unprecedented and equally noteworthy that he can go to trial, face possible conviction, and have it barely affect his political fortunes.
Read more McManus columns about Trump:
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