Well, it sure is a huge relief, that Donald Trump was convicted on all 34 indictments in the “hush money” trial in Manhattan.

Will it make a difference in the campaign?

Who knows.

It would have been embarrassing if this had been a hung jury, or if he had been convicted on just a few of the 34 indictments. But that didn’t happen.

Thank God!

As we know there are seven swing states that will likely decide this election. Those are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Just a few degrees of change in the outcome of those seven states could swing the election one way or another. (In 2020 we had the same swing states, and Biden won all of them except North Carolina. In 2016 Trump won all of them except New Hampshire, which had been a swing state at the time.)

In 2016 we know that the decision of James Comey to reopen the Hillary email investigation days before the election might have been the momentum shift that handed the election to Trump. This conviction might have the same effect for Biden.

But we’ll see.

Trump and his acolytes immediately responded in the same way that they have responded all along, which is simply to lie and lie and lie outright about the case. To set the record straight:

• The Department of Justice did not bring this case; it was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg under statutes of the state of New York. Biden had nothing to do with it.
• The timing of all these cases is primarily the fault of Donald Trump and his legal team, which have clearly been working overtime to run out the clock so that none of these cases could be decided before the November elections.
• When Trump was impeached, his defense team argued that Trump could not be impeached because he had not yet been convicted. Now that he’s out of office Trump’s legal team is arguing that he cannot be convicted because he has absolute immunity as President. They cannot have it both ways.
• Of all the four cases — the DC January 6th Insurrection case, the Georgia election interference case, the Florida classified documents case, and this “hush money” case — this one was generally agreed to be the hardest to prove.
• No matter how often he says it, this case was not “rigged.” Twelve jurors had to agree unanimously that the prosecution had proved its complicated case. And this they did.

Sentencing is scheduled for July 11, four days before the start of the Republican National Convention. Trump will not be sentenced to jail, and he will appeal in any case. The judge will have to think long and hard about what to do with Trump at sentencing. But again, all of that is immaterial as long as it keeps Trump from being President again.

Assuming for a moment that Trump does not become President, the other three cases will be able to be prosecuted to completion. Legal experts say that it’s much more likely that prosecutors will be able to win those cases than this one, and since they won this one, the chances are good. 

How lovely it would be if Trump were convicted in all four of these cases.

In that case, maybe, just maybe, the fever that has gripped our country (and especially the Republican party) might break, and there will be a chance of returning to some kind of sanity again.