This is an extremely strange moment for American democracy. Polls suggest that independent voters – the people who decide American elections – will not vote for a man who is a convicted felon.
But now Donald Trump, currently the favourite to win re-election in November, has been found guilty, on 34 counts, of falsifying business records – and nobody knows if that verdict will make him more popular or less.
On the one hand, a court has decided that, yes, he deliberately altered his financial accounts, possibly for election campaign reasons back in 2016.
He is now a convict. Trump has a murky past, and his dodgy history now appears to have caught up with him.
On the other hand, this Manhattan case has always felt like a political hit job – proof of what Trump has long claimed, that the system is rigged against him, that the Democrats will stop at nothing to keep him out of power.
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