Watch Fox News' initial reaction to Donald Trump being found guilty of 34 felonies
Andy McCarthy: “This is a very political exercise”
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From the May 30, 2024, edition of Fox News' Special Coverage of Donald Trump's Trial
SHANNON BREAM (ANCHOR): Our producers now say 33 and 34, they are saying guilty on all 34 charges. That is where we are at -- the jurors, it looks like we're going to leave for the day, suddenly we get this verdict. It is 34 guilty counts on all of this. I want to bring in Andy McCarthy, who is here with me, Judge Jeanine, as well, and Trey Gowdy. Andy, where we go from here, obviously there will automatically be an appeal for this Trump team as quickly as possible.
There's the legal issue of sentencing to come. That's going to take maybe months to get to a pre-trial report on this and then to a sentencing by the judge and he reminded the jurors, he's the one who decides, but we have the reality now of a former president for the first time being convicted on 34 criminal counts, guilty on all of these counts, whatever conflict or confusion or questions the jury had, they got that information back to them this morning by the end of day 2 of deliberations. We're at 34 guilty counts for the former president of the United States of America.
ANDY MCCARTHY (FOX CONTRIBUTOR): It's a historic trial of a former president of the United States by his partisan adversaries. Whatever you think of the results, it's inconceivable in New York that anyone else other than Donald Trump would ever been indicted in this way. By Alvin Bragg, the elected progressive Democratic district attorney who campaigned on the fact that he would go after Donald Trump, that he had a history of going after Donald Trump.
This is a very political exercise. And you have to say that it accomplished what it set out to accomplish. What they wanted was to have a situation where they could call Donald Trump a convicted felon in the run-up to the election. We have an elected Democrat who got that accomplished. He got a very friendly judge, who ruled his way on every important thing, and turned the jury instructions into a road map to conviction. So now I assume with the mission having been accomplished, we will have more procedural regularity, Shannon, as you just said, there will be a presentence investigation. There should be a sentencing scheduled and we will go from there. But this case will be appeal, and I hope that there will be more fairness and equity in the appealed and there was in the trial.