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
asked to particularize their indictment. there s 34 charges in the indictment that are template, they re bare bones charges. they list element and they say to wit a check or a rebellinger. they do not give ledger. the only time we had felony theories coming out was really kind of, i think, an unethical press conference by alvin bragg where he held up a statement of facts which was not anything the grand jury decided, but something alvin bragg decided. so he skirted the ethical prohibitions about talking about the facts of the case by kind of creating this impersonation document in lieu of an indictment. so you had a very vague indictment, a judge that did not make them particularize, and literally all the way to the closing arguments or at least to the charging conference there was not clear how he was going to instruct the jury on that critical issue of how these misdemeanors became felonies. so that s going to be a big one for appeal. i would also just mention real quick, paul, tha