Biden says Trump’s claim of rigged trial is ‘dangerous’ and ‘reckless’ in White House speech – live | Donald Trump trials
Biden says it’s ‘dangerous’ to say that trial was rigged ‘just because they don’t like the verdict’
Biden warned it was “reckless”, “dangerous” and “irresponsible” to say that the trial was rigged “just because they don’t like the verdict”.
The US justice system has endured for nearly 250 years and is “literally the cornerstone of America” and should be respected, Biden said.
We should never allow anyone to tear it down.
Key events
On pro-Trump websites, calls for violence, riots and revolution
Enraged by Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts by a New York jury, his supporters flooded pro-Trump websites with calls for riots, revolution and violent retribution, Reuters reports, based on its review of three Trump-aligned websites: the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Patriots.Win and the Gateway Pundit.
Some called for attacks on jurors, the execution of the judge, Justice Juan Merchan, or outright civil war and armed insurrection.
“Someone in NY with nothing to lose needs to take care of Merchan,” wrote one commentator on Patriots.Win. “Hopefully he gets met with illegals with a machete,” the post said in reference to illegal immigrants.
On Gateway Pundit, one poster suggested shooting liberals after the verdict. “Time to start capping some leftys,” said the post. “This cannot be fixed by voting.”
As Reuters notes, these kinds of threats are not new, or limited to this single case:
As he campaigns for a second White House term, Trump has baselessly cast the judges and prosecutors in his trials as corrupt tools of the Biden administration, intent on sabotaging his White House bid. His loyalists have responded with a campaign of threats and intimidation targeting judges and court officials.
My colleague Gloria Oladipo had more earlier today on threats against Judge Merchan in particular:
Callum Jones
Wall Street woes: how much value did Trump’s company lose post-conviction?
Donald Trump’s paper fortune dropped by hundreds of millions of dollars on Friday as shares in his media firm came under pressure in the wake of his conviction in his New York hush-money trial.
Trump Media & Technology Group’s stock finished the day down 5.3% on Wall Street, denting the value of the former president’s vast stake in the business.
By the time markets closed for the day, Trump’s stake stood at about $5.6bn. The previous day, it had been closer to $6bn.
When New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange closed on Thursday, about an hour before Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme, his stake in Trump Media was worth more than $5.9bn. At one point on Friday, as the company’s stock fell, his stake was worth less than $5.5bn. His fortune recovered some ground near the end of the day.
Read the full story:
It’s a historic criminal conviction. And you’re getting fundraising emails about it.
In an election year, it seems there is no event, no matter how small or how monumental, that cannot be stuffed into the maw of campaign email strategy and emerge as a plea for cash.
The New York Times reports that the California governor Gavin Newsom sent out fundraising appeals to Biden supporters today in response to the Trump campaign’s announcement that it had raised $34.8m in small-dollar donations following the former president’s conviction on felony business fraud charges.
“We cannot risk falling behind,” Newsom wrote.
Fact-checking Trump’s defiant post-conviction rant
Catching up on today’s Trump news? I’ll be sharing key takeaways from the day.
Donald Trump delivered a rambling, incoherent speech laden with falsehoods and conspiracy theories from the atrium of Trump Tower, a day after he was convicted of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush-money criminal trial, my colleague Léonie Chao-Fong reports.
Here are some key fact-checks of his claims:
Video: ‘It’s time for this war to end’ Biden says as he presents new Gaza plan
Joe Biden has urged Hamas to accept a new peace deal he said Israel has put on the table, offering a permanent ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in return for the release of all hostages and the long-term reconstruction of the shattered coastal strip.
“It’s time for this war to end … for the day after to begin,” Biden said, outlining the framework of a three-phase agreement, which he said had been put on the table for the Israeli government.
Read the full story:
Trump supporters post photos of upside down American flags in protest of conviction
The Associated Press and Reuters have reports on the upside-down flags popping up outside homes and businesses, and on social media, as Trump supporters protest his conviction. The Associated Press reports:
After Donald Trump’s historic guilty verdict, a steady flow of images showing upside-down American flags has appeared on social media as his supporters and right-wing commentators protest his felony conviction.
At least one such flag was spotted Friday outside Trump Tower in New York City as the Republican former president spoke about the trial. Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, and Donald Trump Jr., his eldest son, have been sharing images of inverted flags online.
The upside-down American flag gained wide attention recently after revelations that it was flown outside the Alexandria, Virginia, home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election results. A flag like that was carried by the rioters while they echoed Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican representative, and country music singer Jason Aldean were among the prominent Americans to display the inverted flag, Reuters reported, as did the Miami chapter of the Proud Boys, a far-right militant group.
DC disciplinary board recommends Rudy Giuliani lose his law license for challenging election results
This is Lois Beckett, picking up our live politics coverage from Los Angeles.
While Trump continues to rail against his criminal conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records, his longtime ally Rudy Giuliani is facing professional consequences: the potential loss of his law license, Reuters reports:
Rudy Giuliani should be stripped of his law license for his work on a failed lawsuit challenging former President Donald Trump’s 2020 U.S. election loss in Pennsylvania, a Washington, D.C. disciplinary board recommended on Friday.
Giuliani, formerly Trump’s personal lawyer and before that a top Manhattan federal prosecutor and mayor of New York City, tried “to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania voters without the slightest factual basis for doing so,” the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility said in its 63-page report.
In an interview earlier in the day, the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, called on the supreme court to intervene in Donald Trump’s business fraud conviction.
“I do believe the supreme court should step in,” Johnson, an ally of Trump, said in an interview with Fox News. “Obviously, this is totally unprecedented, and it’s dangerous to our system.”
The comment comes at a sensitive time for the court, which is currently weighing whether Trump is immune from prosecution for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. In oral arguments last month, some conservative justices appeared open to at least partially accepting his argument, which could have the effect of delaying his trial until after the election.
Meanwhile, Democrats are calling on conservative justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from the case, after rightwing flags were discovered to have flown at two of his houses. Alito has declined their demands. Here’s more about that:
The judge who presided over Donald Trump’s criminal business fraud trial over hush-money payments is the target of a wave of rightwing misinformation in the wake of his conviction on business fraud charges, the Guardian’s Gloria Oladipo reports:
Juan Merchan, the judge who oversaw the New York hush-money trial of Donald Trump, is facing fresh threats to his safety after false reports about jury instructions have circulated online.
Several rightwing pundits, including a Fox News anchor, have incorrectly reported that Merchan told jurors they did not need to be unanimous in finding Trump guilty in order to convict him, NBC News reported.
“Judge Merchan just told the jury that they do not need unanimity to convict,” Fox News anchor John Roberts posted to X on Wednesday. “4 could agree on one crime, 4 on a different one, and the other 4 on another. He said he would treat 4-4-4 as a unanimous verdict.”
Roberts’s post has been viewed almost 6m times.
Misinformation on Merchan’s instructions have drawn threats of violence, especially after Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the hush-money trial on Thursday.
On Gab, a social media site popular among far-right users, one person said it was “time to find out where that judge lives and protest as the left calls it”, NBC reported.
Others in pro-Trump forums accused Merchan of treason, and suggested that he should be hanged for his participation in the trial, an echo of rioters at the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by extremist Trump supporters who called for Mike Pence, then the vice-president, to be hanged for refusing to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
Earlier in the day, Donald Trump expressed regret at not testifying in his defense in his business fraud trial.
The former president has in the past gone so far as to falsely claim that he was prevented from testifying. In an interview with CNN, Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s attorneys, elaborated on why he did not end up appearing as a witness in his defense:
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “No regrets on [Trump] not taking the stand?”
Trump attorney Todd Blanche: “I don’t know if I have any regrets about anything yet. … I don’t think … there was a conviction because he did not take the stand.” pic.twitter.com/zPCCnT4UaN
— The Recount (@therecount) May 31, 2024
Trump conviction dents independent, GOP support – poll
A just-released Reuters/Ipsos poll indicates Donald Trump’s business fraud conviction may cost him among independent voters, as well as Republicans.
The survey conducted following Trump’s guilty verdict on Thursday finds 10% of registered Republican voters are less likely to voter for him, alongside a quarter of registered independent voters.
The findings were significant for a few reasons. Independent voters may decide the outcome in swing states Joe Biden carried in 2020, but where polls show his support has dropped in the years since. And even though Trump easily won the votes necessary to become the GOP’s presumptive nominee, some people continue to cast ballots for Nikki Haley, who bowed out of the race for the Republican nomination months ago. That raises the possibility that the former president is unpalatable to a potentially significant number of Republicans – a group whose ranks may have just grown with his conviction.
Beyond using it to tar Donald Trump as unfit for office, Democrats are deploying his felony conviction on business fraud charges against Republicans seeking election to Congress.
The Guardian’s US politics live blog just received nine emails from the House Majority Pac, which works to elect Democrats to Congress’s lower house. The subject line of each included the name of a vulnerable Republican congressman, and the (made up, rhetorical) quote, “I support crime”.
The emails generally go on to accuse the lawmakers of being “pro-crime” for supporting GOP policies. Here’s what House Majority Pac press secretary Alisha Heng had to say about Jen Kiggans, a Republican representing a hotly contested district in Virginia:
Jen ‘pro-crime’ Kiggans fell in line with convicted criminal Donald Trump long ago and has now gone a step further by flagrantly defaming America’s entire criminal justice system. Trump was convicted by a jury of his peers, and voters will not forget how Jen Kiggans denigrated everyday Americans to stand by a felon in November.
Rightwing Republicans vow to defy Democrats in Senate after Trump conviction
Eight Republican senators say they will refuse to cooperate with the chamber’s Democratic leadership following Donald Trump’s conviction.
The group includes lawmakers from deep-red states, such as Mike Lee of Utah, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, as well as those representing places where Democrats can occasionally put up a fight, such as JD Vance of Ohio and Florida’s Rick Scott and Marco Rubio. It is unclear what practical impact their declaration will have in a chamber where Democrats have a 51-seat majority and are sometimes able to move legislation with the assistance of more moderate Republicans.
Here’s more from Lee on the group’s pledge:
Strongly worded statements are not enough.
Those who turned our judicial system into a political cudgel must be held accountable.
We are no longer cooperating with any Democrat legislative priorities or nominations, and we invite all concerned Senators to join our stand. pic.twitter.com/H0CzIjXgwC
— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) May 31, 2024
Biden says ‘it’s time for this war to end, for the day after to begin’
Israel has made its proposal, Biden said, and the US “will help ensure that Israel lives up to their obligation”.
Biden described it as a “truly decisive moment”, and said the deal is an opportunity for Hamas to prove whether it really means it when it said it wanted a ceasefire.
“People all over the world have called for a ceasefire,” the president said.
Now it’s time to raise your voices and demand Hamas come to the table, agree to this deal, and end this war that they began.
Biden called on “everyone who wants peace now” to “raise their voices and let their leaders know they should take this deal”.
He concluded his speech by saying:
It’s time to begin this new stage, for the hostages come home, for Israel to be secure, for the suffering to stop. It’s time for this war to end, for the day after to begin.
Joe Biden, after presenting Israel’s new proposal, said “that is the offer that’s now on the table”.
Biden said he knew that there are those in Israel – including in the Israeli coalition government – who will not agree with this plan and who are calling for the war to continue indefinitely.
He said those people “made it clear they want to occupy Gaza … and the hostages are not a priority to them.” Biden said:
I’ve urged the leadership in Israel to stand behind this deal despite whatever pressure comes. To the people of Israel, let me say this – as someone who’s had a lifelong commitment to Israel, as the only American president has ever gone to Israel in a time of war, as someone who just sent the US forces to directly defend Israel when it was attacked by Iran, I ask you to take a step back. Think what will happen if this moment is lost. You can’t lose this moment.
Biden outlines new Israeli proposal for ceasefire in Gaza
Joe Biden, in a speech from the White House, moved on to the situation in the Middle East.
He said his negotiators and the foreign policy intelligence community have been “relentlessly” focused for the past several months not just on a ceasefire in Gaza – which he said would “inevitably be fragile and temporary” – but on a “durable end of the war”.
Biden said Israel has offered a “comprehensive new proposal” that has been transmitted by Qatar to Hamas, and that the deal is “an opportunity to prove” whether Hamas really mean it when they say they want a ceasefire.
The new proposal has three phases, Biden said.
The first phase would last for six weeks and include “a full and complete ceasefire, withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza”, the release of a number of hostages (including women, elderly, wounded) and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, as well as the release of American hostages.
Under the first phase, Biden said, civilians would be able to return to their homes and neighbourhoods in all areas of Gaza, including in the north. Some 600 trucks carrying humanitarian aid would be delivered to Gaza every single day, and aid would be safely and effectively distributed to those who need it.
During that first phase, Israel and Hamas would negotiate the arrangements to get to phase two – “a permanent end to hostilities”, Biden said.
Phase two would be in exchange for the release of all remaining living hostages, including male soldiers, and that Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza, Biden said.
As long as Hamas lives up to its commitments, a temporary ceasefire will become – in the words of the Israeli proposal – the cessation of hostilities permanently.
Phase three would involve a major reconstruction plan for Gaza, and any final remains of hostages who have been killed would be returned to teir families.
Biden says it’s ‘dangerous’ to say that trial was rigged ‘just because they don’t like the verdict’
Biden warned it was “reckless”, “dangerous” and “irresponsible” to say that the trial was rigged “just because they don’t like the verdict”.
The US justice system has endured for nearly 250 years and is “literally the cornerstone of America” and should be respected, Biden said.
We should never allow anyone to tear it down.
Biden says Trump verdict shows ‘no one is above the law’
Joe Biden is delivering a speech from the White House, where he began by saying that he wanted to say a few words “about what happened yesterday in New York City”.
“The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed,” the president said.
Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself.
Biden said the state was a state case and not a federal one, that was heard by a jury of 12 Americans “like you” who were chosen the same way every jury is chosen. Biden said:
Trump will be given the opportunity – as he should – to appeal that decision, just like everyone else has that opportunity. That’s how the American system of justice works.
