Donald J. Trump — once and, he hopes, future, president of the United States — was convicted by a jury of his peers on 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Of his peers? Well, not so far as former president Trump is concerned.
In a predictable tirade after the verdict was returned, he stormed that it was "a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt" and once more claimed that the venue of the trial should have been shifted because he had polled between 5 and 6% in that district when he last ran for office.
"I’m a very innocent man, and it’s OK, I’m fighting for our country. I’m fighting for our constitution. Our whole country is being rigged right now."
In peaceful, far off and mostly non-partisan New Zealand, this is just another bewildering chapter in the strangest political career in history, a tawdry and grotesque farrago which Hunter S. Thompson at his most deranged would have struggled to imagine.
The latest, unwanted addition to the Trump legacy is for him to have become the first current or former US president to have faced a criminal trial.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office alleged $US130,000 paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels on Trump’s behalf was payment for her silence regarding the relationship between herself and the businessman.
The payment was then falsely recorded, a deliberate error in violation of New York state election law: the sum vastly exceeded the limit on individual campaign contributions, and the payment was effectively a campaign donation.
Whether anyone knowing of the payment before the US presidential election in 2016 would have changed their vote is a moot point.
Given some of extraordinary material already in the public domain about the then Mr Trump — most notably the infamous Access Hollywood tape on which he was recorded boasting about groping women — it might not have.
Or not. Who can tell?
In normal circumstances, Trump’s odious actions, over many years, would mean he had no chance at all of being elected to public office.
But the United States is so riven by division and so trapped in blinkered partisanship that the Republicans, the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, gave little serious thought to not endorsing anyone other than a former president who everyone knew was facing a raft of court cases over his conduct, as their 2024 presidential nominee.
And he may well still win, despite it all. Trump’s wild claims yesterday that "This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent," will resonate with ardent Trumpists.
There are millions willing, on the grounds of political expediency, to turn a blind eye to behaviour which they would otherwise consider reprehensible.
There were some things that the former president said yesterday which were reasonable observations though.
Firstly, his claim that the United States is "a divided mess" is spot on — although he would be unlikely to concede that much of this is of his own making.
Trump, sadly, is also spot on in his assertion that "this is long from over". There will no doubt be an appeal, and there are more court cases grinding their way through the legal system.
This ongoing circus would be amusing but for the fact that arguably the world’s most important job is up for grabs, and this is one of the leading candidates.
Heaven help us, and heaven help the United States.
