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Audio Excerpt – Judge:

“We are looking at count one - guilty, count two - guilty.. count three - guilty… count four - guilty...”

ASHLYNNE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ashlynne McGhee, this is 7am.

Audio Excerpt – Judge:

“Count seven - guilty.. count eight - guilty…”

ASHLYNNE:

I know there’s not much that surprises anymore when it comes to Donald Trump…

Audio Excerpt – Judge:

“Count twelve - guilty… count thirteen- guilty…”

ASHLYNNE:

But stay with me for a moment - because today we’re at the point of talking about the logistics of a former president potentially running an election campaign from a jail cell, which of course begs the question - where would the secret service sleep?

Audio Excerpt – Judge:

“Counts 23 - guilty, 24 - guilty, 25 - guilty,”

ASHLYNNE:

We’re not there yet - Trump’s been convicted of falsifying business records to cover up an affair with a porn star - but he may escape jail when he’s sentenced in July and he’s promised an appeal.

Today - Senior Researcher at The Australia Institute Dr Emma Shortis - on the mind boggling logistics - and the risk of violence and disorder in the fallout from the verdict.

Audio Excerpt – Judge:

“Count 31 - guilty, 32 - guilty..."

ASHLYNNE:

It’s Monday June 3.

Audio Excerpt – Judge:

“Count 34 - guilty, that is Donald J Trump defendant in Donald J Trump v The City of New York - guilty on all 34 felony charges. That is the verdict here in this case.”

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ASHLYNNE:

Emma, Donald Trump is now a convicted criminal. Pay me a picture of some of the reactions we saw after this pretty stunning verdict came down.

EMMA:

Yeah, it is stunning. Look, the reactions, well, they've been almost exactly as you would predict them to be. So Trump has of course, talked about a weaponised system of justice, that this is an unjust political trial. He's had his surrogates out as well, saying much the same thing, particularly the candidates for his running mate. So the vice presidential candidate have been doing the rounds of social media and American TV, saying exactly the kinds of things in support of Donald Trump.

Audio Excerpt – Tim Scott:

“This is the weaponisation of the justice system against their political opponent. This is a justice system that hunts Republicans while protecting Democrats.

Audio Excerpt – Ted Cruz:

“This was not law. This was not criminal justice. This was politics. This was a political smear job. This was an attack job. This is what you see in Banana Republics….”

Audio Excerpt – Marco Rubio:

“This is the quintessential show trial. This is what you see in communist countries.”

EMMA:

Interestingly, the Biden administration has been pretty quiet. They've actually issued a statement saying something along the lines of, we support the rule of law and won't be making a further comment. And that's very much in line with their efforts to keep distance, I suppose, between the White House and the Department of Justice. That's not going to fly, of course, with Donald Trump supporters who are utterly convinced that this is a conspiracy to stop Donald Trump from being elected. And, you know, as he has for a long time, he's been very successful at weaponising that narrative.

Audio Excerpt – Trump Supporters:

“You can't just killed our country. You just fucking let them…It's a grab. It's all owned by China!”

EMMA:

So Trump has been running these lines about 'this is a political case. This is Joe Biden coming out to get him. It's part of the deep state conspiracy that has been in place from the start’.

Audio Excerpt – Donald Trump:

“And the whole thing, we didn't do a thing wrong. I'm a very innocent man, and it's okay. I'm fighting for our country. I'm fighting for our Constitution. Our whole country is being rigged right now. This was done by the Biden administration.”

EMMA:

And if you listen to the reaction in Australia, not not just about this particular case, but about Donald Trump more generally, I think you can see, particularly in the Liberal Party elements to the further right in the Liberal Party being emboldened by Trump and by his support and starting to use the same kind of language that Trump uses. You know, we've heard Peter Dutton talk about, you know, the rise of woke politics in Australia and what that might mean with lines kind of directly imported from the United States. So I think that's something we should watch, just given what's going on in that right wing universe.

ASHLYNNE:

Take me to the actual verdict. Now, what was found and just how significant is it?

EMMA:

Sure. So this case has been… it's kind of been dubbed the hush money case, I suppose. And it's this argument that Donald Trump sought to suppress a bad news story about his affair with an adult film star, because he was worried… he and his team were worried that it would affect the outcome of an election. So essentially, they've paid this person off to stop her from going public with a story, because they were worried that it would mean Donald Trump wouldn't win the election. And so it has been originally framed, I suppose, as just a kind of sleazy case, like more of a sex scandal case surrounding Donald Trump. But what if it's actually about is it an effort to influence an election result and I think forms part of an established pattern now of efforts to that end. So this happened before the 2016 election. And then, of course, the other criminal cases that Trump is involved in, the other three are about similar patterns of behaviour throughout his presidency and afterwards. And interestingly, this case was often framed as the weakest of the four. You know, the one that had the least significance where actually the evidence was the weakest. And so the fact that he's been found guilty so quickly, really, by a jury on every single count, there is 34 separate felony counts is really hugely significant. And I think potentially at least establishes a pattern for those other three criminal cases with the caveat, of course though, that the other three cases have been delayed by a number of appeals. Some of the questions have been elevated to the Supreme Court. And so it's actually pretty likely that this case is the only one that's going to be even close to being finalised before the election in November.

ASHLYNNE:

So, Emma, there's been a lot of headlines around about how Donald Trump can, in fact, still be president, even as a convicted felon. Talk me through how that's possible and how that would work.

EMMA:

Yeah it's wild, so you can't vote as a convicted felon, but he can run for the presidency. I mean, it's true. Again, like, this is a completely wild situation that the United States has never confronted before. So no precedent for it. But there's actually nothing legal to stop somebody running for president, even if they've been convicted of a crime. Theoretically, even if they're in prison, you know, they can still run a campaign and still be president. It is a wild thing to contemplate. But here we are.

ASHLYNNE:

I want to get into a little more of the detail around that. So logistically, if he were to be jailed and that's not a certainty. But if he were to be jailed, how would he be sworn in? How would he govern? What would you know? What would a campaign look like? Talk me through all of those logistical details.

EMMA:

Yeah. Look, I mean, I suppose the first thing I would say is that, sentencing is expected on the 11th of July, and I'm not a legal expert, but the general consensus is that jail time is unlikely. It's more likely to be a suspended sentence or a fine or something like that. But the logistics even of that are pretty wild to contemplate, because if he is on probation, for example, he will have to seek permission to leave New York to campaign. He’d probably get that permission. In terms of, you know, the potential for him to actually go to prison, which is certainly possible. Nobody really knows. You know, there's all these questions about whether he has a Secret Service detail as a former president, for example, that goes with him everywhere. So, like, where do they go? Are they in prison with him or like next door or outside? And actually nobody has answers to any of these questions. How do you run a campaign from a jail cell given, for example, how many phone calls you're allowed to have per day? You don't have cameras coming in all of the time? And actually, this is what leads me to suspect that there will be a reluctance to impose a prison sentence with this verdict. I do think, though, the more likely outcome is that all of this will be delayed indefinitely. You know, Trump is so good and his legal team is so good at dragging all of these things out with appeals. He's been doing it successfully since the 1970s. The likelihood is more that, you know, he dragged it out for as long as possible. And then if he wins an election, ignores the sentence, or, you know, the United States is in such chaos that it's unenforceable somehow. So maybe I'm suggesting that an inauguration from a prison cell is not likely, but I don't want to make that prediction in case it does happen. I wouldn't rule it out.

ASHLYNNE:

After the break… how criminal convictions could boost Trump’s electoral prospects…

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ASHLYNNE:

Emma in terms of Donald Trump's bid for re-election, how does this play out and how does that affect it?

EMMA:

I think it galvanises the base. You know, it works into his narrative really well in terms of, you know, that this is a conspiracy against him and all that standing between Donald Trump and his supporters is him. And that's a line he's been running for a really long time, quite successfully. Look, there has been polling that suggests that a criminal conviction will affect the way more independent voters or undecided voters feel about Donald Trump, that having actually had a conviction that people would reconsider his, I guess…how fit he is for the presidency. So we do have that information, but I think we should be pretty sceptical about that because, you know, we keep predicting that support for Donald Trump will fall off. You know, people couldn't possibly keep supporting him after he's got a criminal conviction. And those predictions, you know, keep, keep falling over as well. So I wouldn't necessarily imagine that support drops off, especially given that President Joe Biden's approval rating is still so low. You know, we haven't really spoken about that, but that is an extraordinary situation to contemplate where you have one candidate who's actively anti-democratic, who's now a convicted criminal facing a current president and then being in polling, effectively neck and neck. You know, some of the most recent polling done by The New York Times, albeit before this result, of course, suggested that if the election was held tomorrow, Trump would win. You know, he would win those critical swing states.

ASHLYNNE:

And as we talk Emma, I've just tried to access Donald Trump's donation website not to make a donation, but it's down. What's that about?

EMMA:

The consensus is that it's because there's been so much traffic, you know, that this result has confirmed in that right wing universe that, you know, they're out to get Donald Trump and he needs his supporters to donate. And certainly the campaign would be heartened by that, because actually, those small donations so that 5 to $10 repeat donations that come from supporters are really critical to raising money and that's been dropping off for Trump. So that's the reason we've seen in the news recently that Trump has been courting billionaires, for example, that he's been trying to convince the billionaires to give him money. He's been making them promises, for example, been making some promises to oil barons about what he'll do if they donate money to his campaign. And we know another one of the billionaires that Trump has been at least attempting to court is Elon Musk, of course, and anybody who's still on Twitter or X will have seen Musk's, I'm not sure if it's a dissent or a revelation, I suppose, of his politics into some pretty extreme views and lots of noise about those kind of woke politics that fits really well into Trump's narrative. And, I think Trump certainly has an interest in courting Musk and his money. And so watching how that plays out and where Musk in particular falls along those lines will be, I guess, another indication of the strength of Trump's fundraising power, which, of course, in American politics has a huge impact on presidential outcomes.

ASHLYNNE:

And we've already seen how American voters can see two really different realities. So now we've got Trump as a convicted criminal. Him, on the other hand, denying that there was ever a fair trial and that he's been stitched up. What does that mean for the risk of disorder or violence as the campaign rolls on?

EMMA:

I mean, American politics has always been violent. You know, the country was nearly torn apart by a civil war. And so, you know, I've said that political violence has been increasingly normalised. But it's always been there, of course. But as we've seen over the weekend, the potential for that to, you know, explode there into particular incidents or something more is, is really, really high.

Audio Excerpt – Trump Supporter 1:

“What goes on!? What goes on!?”

Audio Excerpt –Trump Supporter 2:

“You know, I predict there will be a revolution in this country. If this doesn't get cleared up and cleared up well.”

Audio Excerpt –Trump Supporter 1:

“Take me instead! Arrest me instead!”

EMMA:

The closer it gets to November, of course, depending on what happens, the potential for that unrest increases. You know, there has been a normalisation, I think, of political violence in the United States. And I think especially in the case that the election result is close, which it looks like it will be. The likelihood, I think, of a repeat of that kind of violence is is really, really high. But it's something I think that we should all be, especially in Australia, given how close we are to the United States. It's something that we should all be deeply concerned by, because that normalisation of political violence is a really scary prospect, I think, in the most powerful country in the world.

ASHLYNNE:

If you stop for a moment and think about what we're talking about, it's quite the moment in history, isn't it? A former president and presidential candidate being convicted. What is it about all of these that strikes you the most?

EMMA:

Look, I think for me, it is, you know, it's really easy to get caught up in the day to day news cycle. You know, that this next unprecedented, extraordinary thing has happened again, like. But for me, the striking thing is the long threads of American history that have led us to this point. You know, the United States has never been united. There have always been multiple versions of the United States going back to the Civil War. And those contradictions and tensions between those different versions of the United States have never been reconciled. You know, they've never been united. What we are facing now, I think, is the consequences of that, of the unresolved issues of the civil war, of the unresolved issues of the civil rights movement, for example, in the 1960s, playing out in real time with really dangerous political consequences. And so the only way, I think, for the United States to move forward is to actually confront those foundational issues rather than the specifics of Donald Trump, because he didn't come from nowhere. He's in some ways, I think, the logical conclusion of many of those historical contradictions and understanding that, I think, is the only way to understand the Trump phenomenon.

ASHLYNNE:

Emma, thanks so much for your time.

EMMA:

My pleasure, thanks for having me.

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ASHLYNNE:

Also in the news today…

The Australian Electoral Commission’s new boundaries for a series of seats in Victoria and Western Australia could mean they’ll be more likely to change hands. Labor’s Peter Khalil will see his margin, on paper, cut in half – with his seat now including stronger Greens-leaning booths in Melbourne’s inner-north. While Liberal Keith Wolahan’s seat of Menzies is now notionally a Labor seat.

And…

The ANC, the party of Nelson Mandela, has suffered its worst election result since the end of apartheid in South Africa and the first democratic elections were held. Once the dominant force in South African politics, the ANC has now been forced into coalition talks to form government for the first time.

I’m Ashlynne McGhee. This is 7am, thanks for your company - we will see you again tomorrow morning.

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