This article lists reactions to the prosecution of Donald Trump in New York on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records of a hush money payment relating to the Stormy Daniels–Donald Trump scandal. Trump was convicted on all charges on May 30, 2024. The conviction is the first for a former U.S. president.
Neither the indictment nor the conviction disqualified Donald Trump's candidacy in the 2024 presidential election. His potential physical confinement in prison would have hampered him from performing duties such as traveling and handling classified documents.
Before the indictment.
In early 2023, while an indictment was widely anticipated, it remained publicly unknown when the Manhattan grand jury would finally decide whether to indict. On March 18, Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would be arrested on March 21 and called for protests to "take our nation back!" "Time" magazine reported that prominent supporters and far-right groups who responded to his call in the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack were reluctant. A demonstration was held by the New York Young Republican Club on March20, though the presence of journalists vastly outnumbered it.
On March 22, 2023, a post was made on Trump's Truth Social account featuring two side-by-side images; one image showed Trump with a baseball bat, and the other image showed prosecutor Alvin Bragg. The post was eventually deleted, with Trump explaining in an interview that the post shared an article by the National File, a right-wing blog, that had those side-by-side images, which was why the images appeared in his Truth Social post.
On March 23, 2023, Trump wrote on Truth Social that "potential death &amp; destruction in such a false charge [of himself] could be catastrophic" for America, and that only an America-hating "degenerate psychopath" would charge him. He also called District Attorney Bragg an "animal", which many have said has racist overtones.
Judge Merchan has received death threats and the Manhattan courthouse has been inundated with harassing calls and emails to Merchan's courthouse chambers.
During pretrial proceedings.
Public opinion.
Following the March 30, 2023, indictment, an ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted from March 31 to April 1, 2023, showed a plurality of Americans believed Trump should be charged, with 45% of voters believing Trump should be charged, 32% believing he should not, and 23% saying that they "don't know". The poll was split along party lines, with 88% of Democrats and 16% of Republicans believing Trump should be charged.
A CNN poll conducted from March 31 to April 1 found that 60% of Americans approved of the indictment, but that 76% of Americans believed that "politics played at least some role in the decision to indict Trump."
ABC News/Ipsos conducted a second poll from April 6 to April 7, 2023, showing a 5-point increase to 50% among Americans who believed Trump should be charged, of which this view among Americans with no party preference rose to 54% from 40%. Meanwhile, 53% of Americans believed Trump intentionally did something illegal. The poll was again split along party lines, with 87% of Democrats, 57% of Independents, and 19% of Republicans in favor of the indictment.
Republicans.
Donald Trump.
The timing of the March 30 indictment reportedly surprised Trump and his team, who learned about it from the news. His attorneys had believed it was still weeks away and had expected the district attorney's office to inform them directly.
Trump attributed his indictment to political persecution and election interference, among other things. He sent emails to his supporters asking for donations to "defend our movement from the never-ending witch hunts" and wrote that donations would have a "1,500% impact". The 2024 Trump campaign stated that it received over $4 million in donations in the 24 hours after the indictment was announced, and $7 million within three days.
The day after Trump was indicted, he criticized Judge Merchan. He claimed that Merchan "hates" him and treated his companies "viciously" in a related case, and that he "strong armed" Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg into accepting a plea deal, though Weisselberg had reached the deal with prosecutors and his own lawyers and Merchan only approved it. Trump also claimed that Merchan had been "hand picked by Bragg &amp; the prosecutors" although judges are randomly assigned and prosecutors had no role in Merchan's assignment. After the indictment, Trump and a small number of allies in the GOP advocated cutting funds for the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with Trump saying in his social media platform that the law enforcement were weaponized by the Democrats.
On April 12, 2023, citing the criminal case, Trump sued his former lawyer Michael Cohen for allegedly revealing his confidences and "spreading falsehoods" about him. On April 23, 2023, Trump praised Republicans who had supported him amid two impeachments and the criminal proceedings, contrasting this against the widely negative perception of Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
On February 15, 2024, Trump told reporters, without naming any specific legal scholar, that "Virtually every legal scholar says they don't understand it [charges], that there's no crime. Even if he [Trump] was guilty of something, there's no crime."
Members of Congress.
Congressional Republicans generally condemned the indictment as unprecedented and a weaponization of justice. Some alleged the indictment constituted election interference, as Trump was an announced candidate in the November 2024 presidential election.
On March 19, 2023, Kevin McCarthy, then Speaker of the House, discouraged protests if Trump is indicted, asserting that not even Trump wanted them. On March 30, McCarthy tweeted: "Alvin Bragg has irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election. As he routinely frees violent criminals to terrorize the public, he weaponized our sacred system of justice against President Donald Trump. The American people will not tolerate this injustice, and the House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account."
When Senator Lindsey Graham was interviewed by Fox News, he stated that "you need to help this man, Donald J. Trump. They're trying to drain him dry ... Go to DonaldJTrump.com and give money so he can defend himself."
On March 20, 2023, Republicans Jim Jordan, James Comer and Bryan Steil, chairs of the House Judiciary, Oversight and Administration committees, respectively, sent Bragg a letter calling for him to testify before their committees, and to provide communications, documents and testimony about the inquiry, calling the upcoming indictment an "unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority." Later they told Bragg they might consider legislation "to protect former and/or current Presidents from politically motivated prosecutions by state and local officials." Bragg's office wrote back that the requests were an "unlawful incursion into New York's sovereignty," noting such information about ongoing investigations was confidential under state law. Jordan in February 2023 had received a private request from Trump's lawyer Joe Tacopina to investigate Bragg for his actions against Trump, according to "The New York Times" and CNN. Representative Elise Stefanik, the House Republican Conference chair, has been briefing Trump on House Republicans' committee work, including the House committees' plans to respond to Bragg, according to CNN on March 28. On April 11, Bragg sued Jordan in federal court, alleging that Jordan was trying to "intimidate and attack" him.
Trump-aligned Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a member of the House Oversight Committee, has acknowledged informing Trump of "everything that we're doing ... He seems very plugged in at all times. Sometimes I'm shocked at how he knows all these things." Greene cautioned against protests against Trump's potential indictment, warning of a repeat of the January 6 United States Capitol attack; but reversed this stance after the charges were actually made.
On April 7, Bennie Thompson stated "They have a fundamental right to defend that individual [Trump], and that's what they're doing. My concern is, in defense of it, they're attacking the rule of law, and the rule of law in this country is clear. We have separation of powers in our Constitution."
The five GOP senators who had endorsed Trump's campaign said that his indictment would not alter their support for him.
Other presidential candidates.
Many of Trump's political rivals, such as entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley, who were at the time running for the presidential nomination, expressed opposition to the indictment. Former vice president Mike Pence called the indictment an outrage and a "political prosecution". Former governor and prosecutor Chris Christie condemned Trump's conduct but said that the case was weak and should not have been brought; Christie has endorsed Jack Smith's prosecution of Donald Trump.
Former Governor of Arkansas and potential contender for the presidency Asa Hutchinson argued for supporting the legal process, but he also said that he hoped voters would still be able to decide for themselves if Trump should be elected. In mid-March 2023, Hutchinson argued that if indicted, Trump should withdraw his candidacy "out of respect for the institution of the presidency", not because it would be judicially damning but because it would distract from the election.
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, the state in which Trump resides, said that the state of Florida would not assist with any extradition of Trump to New York. However, under the Extradition Clause of Article IV of the U.S. Constitution, governors cannot reject the extradition requests of other states, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in "Puerto Rico v. Branstad" (1987) that federal courts can enforce this provision if needed.
Others.
Former national security advisor under Trump John Bolton stated that he hoped the New York prosecutors were "very, very certain of their case" because if they indicted but did not convict Trump, it would bolster his campaign.
William Barr, former Attorney General under Trump, gave his opinion that the Democratic strategists know this case will help Trump and they want him to be the Republican nominee because he is the "weakest of the Republican candidates," and predicted that he would be defeated by Biden in the 2024 presidential election. Barr also considers that this case lacks merit, calling it "transparently an abuse of prosecutorial power to accomplish a political end and ... an unjust case."
The Heritage Foundation filed two lawsuits asserting that Bragg failed to comply with freedom of information requests regarding his reputed communications with the Justice Department, the Biden administration, and/or Democratic lawmakers.
In September 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the trial "shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others democracy" and "Everything that is happening with Trump is the persecution of a political rival for political reasons. That's what it is. And this is being done in front of the public of the United States and the whole world."
On March 17, 2024 Juan Merchan, the New York Supreme Court judge presiding over the case, gave a statement to the Associated Press noting that preparation was "intense" and that he was striving "to make sure that I've done everything I could to be prepared and to make sure that we dispense justice. There's no agenda here. We want to follow the law. We want justice to be done. That's all we want." The anodyne statement resulted in an unsuccessful recusal motion by the defense.
On March 24, 2024, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung stated that a conviction would not impact Trump's right to vote stating: "These 'legal experts' clearly received their law degrees from fictional institutions because they currently live in a fantasy land devoid of reality" stating detractors suffered from "Trump Derangement Syndrome."
Democrats.
Democratic Representative Adam Schiff tweeted: "The indictment of a former president is unprecedented. But so too is the unlawful conduct in which Trump has been engaged." Schiff served as the lead impeachment manager during Trump's first impeachment trial. The Biden administration said they would not take part in the public discussion. Democrats have billed the indictment as Trump being held accountable under the law. Democratic Representative Jamaal Bowman shouted "Get the hell out of here!" at Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene for supporting Trump during a Trump protest in New York City.
In tandem to the proceedings, on March 22 the New York Senate passed a bill aiming to exclude the terms of a U.S. president from the time counted by statutes of limitations, as presidential immunity could potentially be used to evade prosecution.
Legal experts.
The indictment raises novel and complex legal issues. Legal experts contacted by the "New York Times" said that the indictment combines business records charges with state election law in a way that had never