Part of me is surprised, part of me is amused, part of me is scared to death.

Donald J. Trump, once the President of the United States, is now a convicted felon. The first person to have occupied the Oval Office to be convicted of a criminal offense. Well, 34 of them. We will see if he’s sentenced to prison time, but the appeal to overturn the conviction is already in the works (no surprise there). So whatever the sentence, he won’t be going to jail anytime soon.

Yeah, I’m a little surprised that the jury returned Guilty verdicts on all 34 counts. This says several things to me, not the least of which is that Trump’s legal team is just as inept now as it ever has been. That the 12 jurors – people acceptable to both prosecution and defense, mind you – unanimously determined that the prosecution’s case proved beyond reasonable doubt that Trump really did everything they accused him of doing. All 34 individual charges. Unanimously.

And let me put in a little aside here. If you think this trial was just about him paying a porn star to keep her mouth shut about them bumping uglies, you’re missing something. More accurately, you haven’t been told the facts of the case. I could be wrong, but I don’t believe there was anything intrinsically illegal about him paying her to keep quiet about their little encounter; it could have been referred to as an “out of court settlement” or some similar euphemism. But paying her off wasn’t what he was on trial for. This trial was about him “cooking the books,” basically laundering the money he paid her through his business accounts, trying to hide it within his business transactions. That, boys and girls, is a felony.

Sure, the press is going to cover her testimony, in detail. She’s a fairly attractive “adult actress.” A “sex worker” who takes off her clothes and does the deed on camera. There isn’t a news outlet who isn’t going to be all over that. Salacious sex sells advertising minutes and mouse clicks. The charges? What charges? Who cares? There’s a blonde porn star involved!

I’ll bet her PornHub ratings took a big jump when this whole thing broke…

Anyway, part of the legal process here requires establishing that the payment was actually made. That’s the only reason why she testified, she wouldn’t have been there otherwise. The more important testimony came from the others, particularly Mr. Cohen, who should not have been such a believable witness given his background, but the jury apparently believed him more than they believed the denials voiced in court.

Even the juror who only gets his news from “Truth Social,” Trump’s own social media platform…

Admittedly, I wasn’t in the courtroom so I really don’t know everything that was said or done in or out of the jury’s presence (and neither do you, FYI). We only know what the media fed us – that a blonde porn star was involved…

And that defense witnesses – and occasionally defense attorneys – appeared to go out of their way to antagonize the judge. Which is not a bad strategy if you’re looking at an inevitable appeal process. Get the judge mad enough to make a mistake and you have something the appeals court can reverse a conviction over…

I’m not saying that’s what happened, I wasn’t there. Neither were you. But it’s plausible… And we don’t know how much of this happened when the jury was in the room, either. There is a lot of give-and-take in a trial that’s done when the jury can’t hear it.

One of the recurring themes in the media is that the case was politically motivated. I know people who believe the entire case is an elaborate tissue of lies designed specifically to knock Mr. Trump out of the running for a second term as President… Well, there is a germ of truth to that thought; it was political considerations that caused the first prosecutor to shelve the case, it was political considerations that caused the next prosecutor to take it off that shelf (he actually campaigned on that, and was elected because of it).

To the people who believe there was no basis to bring this prosecution, that this case signals the demise of our democracy, I ask that you think on this: there is nothing new to political considerations as part of the formula for any public prosecution, particularly in high-profile cases. Every case brought by public prosecutors has a political component to how the case is handled. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter; the overriding fact is that, in any trial, it’s the prosecution’s job to prove the guilt of the accused party. Period. They must have a provable case against the accused, regardless of any other considerations, and that is particularly true in a high-profile case where every word is going to be scrutinized. The new prosecutor believed the case was pretty solid, so he brought it. The jury seems to have agreed.

The trial is over. The ultimate finders of fact – the jury – said that he did the things he was accused of. Guilty, as charged, 34 times. That’s a done deal.

But Trump, as any defendant in this country, has every right to appeal that conviction, and I’ll be glad when he does. The process must be held accountable (particularly in such a high-profile case); if there were any errors made during that trial, if there were improperly called witnesses, if inadmissible evidence was allowed, if the jury instructions were incorrect, if any impropriety on the part of the Court occurred, then the conviction should be overturned and the case remanded for retrial. But if the proceedings were proper and the trial was fair, then the conviction should be upheld.

And keep in mind that appellate courts do not live on Facebook or X, so take everything you read on social media – EVERYTHING – with a grain of salt. A very large grain…

We’ll see what the appeals court has to say.

So, you can see where I was surprised, and why I might feel a thread of amusement over all this. But given the stark and extreme divisions in this country, it’s what could come next that scares me.