i'm i very innocent man and we'll fight for our constitution. >> dana: defiant in defeat. former president trump vowing to fight his conviction for falsifying business records. that begins at 11:00 a.m. eastern when he holds a news conference on trump tower. bill is off today, good morning, brett. >> bret: good morning, i'm bret baier. this is "america's newsroom." dana, yesterday in the afternoon we thought judge merchan was going to dismiss the jury, wrap up for the day. suddenly it all came down that they had the verdict and what we have seen over the past few hours, the reaction to that and then now this news conference is going to be something as we go forward. >> dana: we were getting ready for "the five" and all of a sudden it changed and it felt -- you could feel a shift change really in the country and in the election. >> bret: really is. we don't know the entire fallout yet. unprecedented conviction. further complicating the former president's schedule. sentencing is set for july 11th. that is just four days before the rnc, republican national convention in milwaukee. the former president's legal team standing strong vowing to keep fighting. >> this is not what this country should be doing to its political leaders past and present. it is hard. it is hard every day and he was resolute, strong. we were all more upset than he was. we're all sitting there and he said all right, let's go and we're gonna fight. >> dana: trump is the first-ever president to be convicted of a crime and prompted the democrats to celebrate but many say it could come back to haunt them. >> they said i have no intention for voting to donald trump and now i am. it will help donald trump. >> they just elected donald trump president. >> everyday americans across the country are now calling and joining the team, even the never trumpers. >> dana: let's get to eric shawn and he can give us the update after the verdict. hi, eric. >> good morning, dana and bret. it ain't over. former president trump has said he will appeal this verdict. the defense says it already has a variety of trial issues to challenge. for example, they say pre-trial publicity made this fair trial impossible. the judge's rulings they also say were too restrictive and as for stormy daniels salacious testimony, the defense says it should never have been allowed. they also say judge juan merchan should have stepped aside for a conflict of interest. merchan donated $15 to president bide app's campaign in 2016 and daughter works for a democratic political campaign firm. the new york state commission on judicial ethics ruled the judge had no conflict. alvin bragg said the jury only relied on the evidence and the law. >> their deliberations led them to a unanimous conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, donald trump, is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree to conceal a scheme to corrupt the 2016 election. >> the convictions came after the jury asked for testimony from "national enquirer" publisher david pecker and michael cohen. both said trump had an august 2015 meeting with them put the illegal scheme in motion. the jury saw the trump financial documents reimbursing cohen for paying stormy daniels and saw the checks trump signed to repay cohen falsely claiming they were for cohen's legal work. despite his credibility issues the jury, it seems, did believe michael cohen. after the verdict cohen told fox news quote, today is an important day for accountability and the rule of law. while it has been a difficult journey for me and my family, the truth always matters. trump's attorneys have 30 days to file an appeal and clearly it seems they think they have a lot to work with. back to you. >> dana: thanks for all you did at the courthouse. >> bret: is jury is still out on political implications, a different kind of jury. let's go to bryan llenas outside trump tower waiting for the news conference at 11:00 a.m. eastern time. good morning, bryan. >> good morning. at 11:00 a.m. former president trump will hold a news conference here in the lobby of trump tower in mid town manhattan in what is the biggest, most important campaign event he has held at trump tower since he came down those escalators in june of 2015 to launch his presidential candidacy back then. now last night former president acknowledged the hundreds of people outside of trump tower that came here following the guilty verdict, historic verdict. he pumped his fist in the air and acknowledged the crowd, which cheered, booed and also chanted, quote, lock him up. today we expect the former president to reiterate a new campaign mantra that the real verdict will be on november 5th by the people when they vote on election day. the trump campaign tells fox former president trump, quote, won't let this, quote, sham stop the movement of this campaign. within minutes of the verdict the trump campaign already began fundraising off of this verdict. the home page on trump's website now says breaking news, i'm a political prisoner asking people to donate. fundraising emails sent after the verdict ask is this the end of america? the campaign says their fundraising website went down within an hour of the verdict due to a record number of supporters wanting to donate to his campaign. trump aheaded a fundraiser last night. in the next six weeks trump has to choose a running mate and participate in the first presidential debate and rnc convention. according to new york law trump has until august 10th, '30 days from sentencing hearing to appeal the verdict. trump defense attorney todd blanche said the venue and timing of the trial were unfair. >> well, i'm not allowed to comment on that. they are still under a gag order. the timing of this most recent grand jury, meaning the 2023 grand jury that ultimately indicted president trump kicked into action less than two months after president trump announced he was running for re-election and there are coincidences and then there are coincidences. i don't think that's just something that happened. >> that gag order is still in place for former president trump. judge juan merchan has given no indication he has lifted that and it is expected to stay through the sentencing and fascinating to see how he answers the questions today. particularly ones like does he regret given the verdict not testifying in his own trial. >> bret: bryan, thanks. >> dana: let's bring in trey gowdy and andy mccarthy. we want to set the stage look at the headline from front pages around the world. everybody with a big guilty sign up there. you can sort of imagine that. it's almost harder to imagine the next slide which is president trump's courtroom calendar versus the campaign calendar and as we've been mentioning we have a debate in three weeks and then -- four weeks and then you have july 11th sentencing and then go to the rnc convention four days later. gentlemen, i want to play for you alvin bragg, the prosecutor's main sound bite from his press conference and get your reactions after you've had a good night's sleep. >> i did my job. our job is to follow the facts and the law without fear or favor. and that's exactly what we did here. i did my job, we did our job. many voices out there. the only voice that matters is the voice of the jury and the jury has spoken. >> dana: let's get both your reactions to that, trey. >> i don't think he did his job so much as he did exactly what he promised he was going to do saying he was going to go after donald trump. this new breed of so-called progressive prosecutors they have a long list of crimes they are not interested in prosecuting. i find it really ironic in new york, which has struggled with violent crime and other forms of crime, the one thing that gets your district attorney's attention is an alleged hush money payment from years ago. if you want to talk about interfering elections. hunter biden is going on trial really soon. 50 intelligence experts alleged said it was russian disinformation. that will be exhibit a in the hunter biden trial. so were those 50 election experts also trying to interfere with the last election by claiming it was something it was not? i hate to get bad news to other d.a.'s and bragg. politics is suppressing negative information and -- if that's a crime start building new prisons. >> dana, you use the word shift before and it is not a long shift given what we're seeing in front of us going from a constitutional republic to a banana republic. all that has to happen is that the rule of law stops being the foundation of a flourishing democratic society and becomes a political weapon. it is normalized as a political weapon. that's why i can't help when i hear alvin bragg say he did his job, when we all know as we sit here that no one -- no one would have been prosecuted on this manufactured offense, which is so cap itchous other than trump. i don't think this is so much about trump as how you try to preserve this legal order that we have and the society that we have if you don't have law that is actually carried out without fear of favor and where law becomes a political weapon. i fear for what happens to us. >> bret: let me follow up on that. bragg is likely going to be the only prosecutor that will bring a trial to a head before the election successfully. the others are in pre-trial decisions right now and disputes and appeals. the other thing he said was this. he said this type of white collar prosecution is core to what we do at the manhattan district attorney's office. as if this is a normal activity. it was anything but normal what happened in this case, right? >> bret, i was a young prosecutor in manhattan, a federal prosecutor when across the street was the district attorney of manhattan county and in those days that office would never in a million years have brought a case like this. and i have to say back in those days -- i really think this is more of a cultural problem than a legal problem. but if you campaigned for office in new york and we're talking about the 1980s, but you said elect me and i will use the powers of the office against our political enemies, you would have had a better chance being run up to bellevue for evaluation than being elected district attorney or attorney general. and yet now they take that position and they get elected. james got elected in a landslide after taking that position. >> dana: listen to rfk junior attempting to be a third party candidate and attempting to figure out a way to try to win the presidency in our pretty much two-party system. watch him here last night. >> you know, when my father became attorney general in 1961 he said rule number one, this department will never be used for political purposes. it is so important that the american public understand that the institutions of our -- the enforcement institutions will never be used to promote one political candidate or party over another. >> dana: i wonder if you could weigh in on the politics here. you have already heard president trump last night when he came out after the verdict saying that biden, if this goes all the way up to the top to the chief enforcement officer of the united states, you had the campaign stay away from everything until this week they decided to go across the street and did the robert de niro thing. so are you -- is the trump campaign going to be able to follow their path right back to even the white house? >> i don't know that they have to follow it to the white house. they can follow it to mer i can garland's department of justice. don't forget what rob hur said about joe biden. is that an endorsement for the presidency you are too feeble minded to be put on trial? i don't think that's a good argument for re-election. another example. nebraska congressman, they will retry him again on the case of a failed memory test that was administered. meanwhile, the u.s. attorney in massachusetts, who lied during the course of an investigation, she got off scot-free. so absolutely they have made a political issue over what kind of department of justice do you want. and if you ask me and andy mccarthy, the best job we ever had is when we stood in front of people saying i represent the united states of america. a blindfolded woman who didn't care about politics, gender or race. and now -- now politics -- you have people running for office promising to go after political opponents like fani willis in atlanta and alvin bragg and james. if people want that there will be a lot of people looking to move to costa rica. that is not the united states. >> bill: last thing, andy, a lot of questions people ask right after this conviction, we have this full screen can trump still run for president? yes. can jurors talk to the press? yes. we'll likely hear for them about behind the scenes what happened. can trump pardon himself? no. there is still the question about can he vote for himself in florida? they don't allow felons to vote in florida and does he go to jail? the sentencing is july 11th. how do you see that right now? >> well, there is the logical way to see it, bret, and then there is a situation we're in, right? so the logical way to see it is we're in a city where serious crime frequently goes unprosecuted and felonies get pled down routinely to misdemeanors, migrants beat the daylights out of a cop on the street and they're back on the street in an hour. this is a non-violent crime. a person who has done great work for new york city in his private capacity and has no criminal record. no one should do five minutes in incarceration for an offense like this. but if you would ask me 14 months ago would this indictment happen and would this trial happen and would it happen the way it happened where the judge gives the jury charge that looks like a roadmap to conviction? i would have said no, i can't imagine that happening. and judge merchan is going to be under tremendous pressure. he is responsive to it from the left to at least impose a modest prison sentence on trump. i don't know that he is going to refuse to do that. >> dana: incredible, interesting times. thank you, gentlemen, thank you so much. bret, we could get reaction from president biden when he departs for the white house this hour. jacque heinrich is live on the south lawn. a shift yesterday. earlier in the week we heard the president would make a statement regardless of the verdict from the white house and then changed their minds? >> we haven't heard anything from the president himself. at least yet. the white house counsel's office only said we respect the rule of law and have no further comment. the biden campaign is fundraising off the verdict warning that trump supporters are energized by it and an email this morning reads trump will be the republican nominee for president but there is one other certainty as you read this, donald trump's supporters are fired up and likely setting fundraising records for his campaign. biden shared a similar fundraising note on his personal twitter account last night. there were reports yesterday the president planned to forcefully address this conviction and that he and his team were mulling how far they should go with it. but whatever happens, whatever we get might be more muted than we first expected. abc is reporting the president doesn't want to feed into the narrative that he is somehow behind the witch hunt. that was advice of the "wall street journal" editorial board. mr. biden is better advised to say nothing. even a platitude will sound like satisfaction by a president who allies convicted a political opponent. his son, hunter, is slated to go on trial in early june. will he comment on that proceeding, too? hunter's upcoming trial has not stopped biden from making hay of trump's legal woes before. >> president biden: a few tough days lately. you might call it stormy weather. now he is acting like he wants to debate me again. make my day, pal, i will even do it twice. let's pick the dates, donald. i hear you're free on wednesdays. >> sources say he will frame trump as a threat to democracy, unworthy of the presidency. they hope that voters who were not as engaged in the election before the verdict will be more engaged now. >> dana: jacque heinrich. thank you. >> bret: we're awaiting a major news conference at trump tower at 11:00 a.m. eastern time set to address supporters after being convicted as we've said on 34 counts of falsifying business records. we will bring that to you live as it happens. meanwhile, will the verdict force the former president to change his campaign strategy? rnc chair michael watley on that. looking ahead to another trial that could alter the political landscape. hunter biden gun case. the president's son heading to court on monday. will voters be paying attention to that? , balanced nutrition for strength and energy. yay - woo hoo! ensure, with 27 vitamins and 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