i m paul gigot. a manhattan jury found donald trump guilty this week on all 34 counts of false iffying business records, the first time in history that a former u.s. president has been convicted of a felony. thursday afternoon s verdict marked a dramatic end to the almost 6-week trial, but trump vowed that the legal fight is not over. this was a rigged decision right from day one. with a conflicted judge who should have never been allowed to try this case, never. and we will fight for our constitution. this is far from over. paul: let s bring in jim trusty, a former federal prosecutor and former donald trump attorney. welcome, jim. good to see you again. so what do you make of this verdict? well, it s not a shock, unfortunately. i mean, this is the lawfare. it s really at a its worst with. you had a politicized prosecutor who had a picked through the trash of a case that the southern district of new york specifically rejected doing that his predecessor rejected doing, but
his predecessor rejected doing, but he revived these misdemeanors with three inventive ways of charging them, got a manhattan jury pool, a manhattan jury selected and very favorable jury instructions. so by the time all of that kind of crescendoed at the end of the week, i wasn t shocked. once you heard there was a verdict, it was pretty clear that it was probably going to be a conviction. paul: so, i mean, do you think this was a foregone conclusion, or were there steps that the defense could have taken that would have been better? well, i mean, there s always room, you know, to do the armchair quarterback at the expense to of fellow lawyers. i think that the defense strategy overall was the right one which was to focus on the credibility of michael cohen, don t pick fights with other witnesses that are basically either friendly or not hurting you and draw all of the jury s attention to the idea that you can t possibly convict anybody no matter what your thoughts are about that pers