A New York jury has convicted former President Donald Trump on 34 felony counts.

The former president and his supporters say it's a conspiracy against him.

His opponents say it shows he's not above the law.

And President Joe Biden will be on the November ballot in Ohio.

Ideas is next.

Hello, and welcome to IDEAS.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Guilty on all 34 felony counts.

That was the history making verdict delivered by a jury in New York City Thursday against Donald Trump.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, The jury spent less than 10 hours deliberating the complex case.

Prosecutors say the former president falsified business records as part of a scheme to influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Speaking after the verdict, Trump said it was rigged and that the real verdict will be delivered in the November election, where he seeks to retake the office from President Biden.

We didn't do anything wrong.

I'm a very innocent man.

And it's okay.

I'm fighting for our country.

I'm fighting for our Constitution.

Our whole country is being rigged right now.

This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent or a political opponent.

And I think it's just a disgrace.

It's a historic moment for the country, and for that reason, we're going to break format on today's Reporters Roundtable by inviting experts to join us and by opening the phone lines for reaction.

Statehouse News bureau chief Karen Kasler is in Columbus.

With me in studio are ideastream Public media deputy editor for news Andrew Meyer.

And Stephanie check.

And joining us in studio four is our political expert, Dr. Tom Sutton, provost and Professor of political science at Baldwin Wallace University, and one of our legal experts, Jonathan Witmer Rich, who teaches at the Cleveland State University College of Law.

Let's get ready to roundtable The case against the 45th president revolved around reimbursements to his former fixer, Michael Cohen, for hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

As Trump ran for president in 2016 and election, he won the falsification of business records to hide the payments constituted felonies after prosecutors proved to the jury that the actions were motivated by Trump's desire to influence the election.

Trump is the first sitting or former president in the nation's history to be convicted of felony crimes.

Tom.

The word historic is being used to describe the verdict.

Really an unchartered territory here.

Yes.

As has been the case in so many situations, including the other trials that are may start at some point.

And of course, the convictions that have already happened in other cases and the civil cases as well.

Donald Trump continues to break precedent from the time he announced he was running to being elected to losing in 2020 and refusing to accept that loss.

And so this is in some ways becoming the new normal when it comes to Donald Trump, his campaigns and quite frankly, the effect it had on the Republican Party, a lot of the stuff that I've seen on social media that is in support of Donald Trump is making the case that this is some sort of vast conspiracy, that there are so many It goes back to the to to the Russia investigation that every time you turn around, there's another there's an impeachment.

There's something else that's going on that this is orchestrated.

That seems to be what plays with with that arm of the party, the Trump support arm, that this is really him being unfairly attacked.

Right.

And so it's the idea that that Biden as president has orchestrated this vast conspiracy and that Democrats prior to that have always engaged in the sort of control of the deep state that term that Trump also uses often.

And it's really a pretty easy story to tell.

And quite frankly, it's a thread through American political history.

We've often had situations where there's this sense that it's Washington versus the rest of us even going all the way back to the Federalist Papers and the fight over the Constitution and whether or not it should be ratified, should we give that much power to the national government?

But these days, when it comes to Trump, it really is about a very effective storyline that each time one of these things happens and now we've got these convictions, it just adds to the same storyline of It's us versus them, the them being the elites, the deep state, D.C. and I'm the one that's going to break the hold of those powers.

If you reelect me as a president.

Jonathan We have an email from Jeff who says, For all the conspiracy theorists out there, I want to hear about the grand jury, jury selection, jury deliberation process and how that would make conspiracies exceedingly difficult.

Seems to me it's easy to scream that it's political when you don't understand how the system works, says Jeff.

So what about that?

This is not a process whereby the president can order someone to be indicted and then and then order a jury to convict at the same time.

There's a process here.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, you know, the a lot of our criminal cases are resolved by plea bargains.

Those are more kind of shadowy behind the, you know, not an open court, but a trial.

You know, we had paneling of a jury and it's jury selection, a long process.

So, you know, this is the you know, the way that it's kind of supposed to work as to have a public trial in front of a jury and get a verdict.

So, you know, that said, there's always the issue of prosecutor discretion and the prosecutor deciding to file these charges in the first place.

That's an enormously prosecutorial discretion is always a a weighty issue, and it's a political issue.

And whenever you're deciding it's political either way, are you going to indict the former president?

Are you not going to do the former president?

Both of those are weighty political decisions.

So there's no escaping the politics here.

I've heard people say who cares what he does if he's if he's sleeping with an adult film star or whatever it might be, It's none of our business.

Who cares?

And I want to make the distinction that that isn't a crime.

What we're talking about.

How did this become felonious in court?

So the additional alimony, you know, we're creating false business records about what actually happened here, right?

We're claiming that we're paying somebody for legal fees when in fact, those legal fees are actually just hush money payments.

But the thing that elevates it to a felony is under New York law, if it's being done with the intent to defraud and the intent to commit another crime here, the state prosecutors allege that the other crime that was intended to be committed were federal election law crimes, state election law crimes and state tax laws violations.

So those are the issues that elevated it to felony counts.

We have a number of other questions here.

I see that the phone lines are filling up quickly as well.

So we'll be getting to those.

There has been a question about whether the former president can continue to run for president, given that he's now been convicted of felonies.

And we have joining us now, Jonathan Entin.

He is a constitutional law expert from emeritus from Case Western Reserve University, and always joins us when we're talking about constitutional issues.

Jonathan, what about that question?

The president, the former president can run.

Yes, he can.

There is nothing in the Constitution that would disqualify a convicted felon from holding the office or even from running.

In fact, we do have a historic precedent for this.

In 1920, Eugene Debs, the Socialist Party candidate for president, was running for federal prison because he had made a speech in Canton, Ohio, criticizing American involvement in World War One.

And the Supreme Court upheld his conviction.

He was still on the ballot.

He got a small percentage of the vote.

But but there was no question that Debs was eligible.

And by the same token, Trump is eligible to run this year.

And when it comes to appeal, which is something that he's talked about doing of this verdict and eventually of the sentencing as well, whatever that might be, that's something that would happen in state court.

Obviously, he has a favorable Supreme Court and would try to get something to that in that direction.

Is there, in your view, any way that this can somehow be moved over in a way to appeal in a federal venue?

He he can't appeal in the federal courts.

He has to appeal in the New York state court system.

And New York has an intermediate court of appeals.

That's where the the appeal will go in the first instance.

Or if he fails in the in the intermediate court of appeals, he can appeal to the highest court in New York state, which, by the way, is called the New York Court of Appeals.

But let's not get bogged down in the.

That's the equivalent of the state Supreme Court.

If he loses there, he could try to get the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case.

But the U.S. Supreme Court will not consider whether the New York courts got state war correct.

The U.S. Supreme Court would only hear some kind of federal constitutional claim that Trump might make arising out of his conviction in the New York courts.

All right.

One other question for you.

Can the former president vote in this election?

I don't know for sure.

Keep in mind that he's been convicted of felonies.

He is a voter in Florida and under Florida law, convicted felons cannot vote.

However, because this conviction came in New York, not in Florida, I'm not sure exactly what the rules in Florida are about the way they treat They tweet out of state convictions.

It may be that if Trump were in jail, he couldn't vote.

But I think it's very unlikely that that the sentence will involve jail time for Trump.

All right.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Anthony, appreciate you dropping into the conversation again here already.

And Robert sends an email.

He says, even though Trump was found guilty, I will be voting for him.

Honestly, this makes me want to vote for him even more to prove that a felony conviction should not affect your ability to do the job.

Moral character does not prevent him from being able to fulfill his duties as president of the U.S. And I feel like having a convicted felon in the highest office in the land and being able to see the most pop secret.

So he's fine with with voting for him.

I want to have your thoughts as well.

And I've see a bunch of them.

What we're going to do is just start taking some phone calls and move on down the line.

Let's start with Michael in Canton.

That's on line three.

Yep.

Hey, Michael.

Hello.

Welcome.

What's on your mind?

He lost.

It's as simple as that.

And all of these Republicans line up and give him a pass.

The 162 happen as a count of their dead cops because the caravan and he lost and they lose all credibility because all of them agree with him.

He said it so many times that he got cheated that they actually believe it now.

It's crazy.

Thank you.

Thank you for the call, Michael.

I appreciate that.

In time that you were driving at that earlier, early on before any of this stuff happened when he was running for president, he noted that he could stand on the middle of I think it was Fifth Avenue and and shoot somebody and still get elected president.

Right.

We're really he's really testing that now.

Yeah, he is.

And some of what we've seen in recent polling and some of the writing that has happened, like in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal has pointed out that voters really on both sides are looking more at what can you do for me as opposed to your character, etc..

The whole concept of the president as a moral leader has steadily eroded over the last 50 odd years.

And I would suggest that that really started to happen, some would say when Johnson got elected, some would say when Nixon got resigned from office, that was probably the major touch point.

And we're seeing that in the polling today that people are saying and not just what have you done, but what are you going to do?

And of course, the bifurcation when it comes to the economy that most people are thinking about, particularly with inflation, is the days were better under Trump.

The days are not good under Biden.

And, of course, Biden can talk all day about him.

Inflation has dropped, but that means the rate of inflation has dropped.

But prices are still higher, much higher than they were when Trump was president.

And that's the bottom line for most voters.

Yeah, I saw some something on social media.

It was just a picture of the prices at the gas pump during Trump and then just the other day and said, Well, that's it.

That's that's where I make my decision.

Right, Exactly.

Even though that varies, it's still the bottom line is and of course, people are also trying to figure out, I want to vote, I need to vote.

But there's all these other factors.

Biden's age, Trump's convictions, character, etc..

If I set all those aside, what's my bottom line for why I vote?

And again, it comes back to these days, really the economy, unless you have specific specific one issues like the abortion issue, the Gaza fight, etc.. All right.

Let's try to get as many of these phone calls in as we can and any of us can react to them.

Let's go with Don in Cincinnati now.

Don, welcome.

Good morning.

I have like three real quick points I'd like to make to Ethan and the rest of group here.

First of all, the main point is that this is going to be a hilarious study on how the greatest criminal in the world has used the court systems to break the law with appeals.

Nothing's going to happen to them until after the elections.

He's going to feel a purity of appeal and then there's going to be the elections.

And he's still going to be appealing.

He's not going to be in jail or serving his sentence at all.

Second point is, many felons in America can't vote, but he's going to be a felon and running for president.

Third point is, have you ever heard of a dictator for a day?

I'm done.

Okay.

Thank you, Don.

Appreciate your thoughts.

Let's let's go to Polly in Randolph, Ohio.

Polly, welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Two questions.

A lot of people say that the Justice Department is being weaponized and controlled by Biden.

But if that's the case, why are the other two federal cases against Trump being put on hold and being put on hold forever?

And the Trump Project 2025 indicates that the Justice Department should be under total control of the president.

So I just am conflicted with those ideas.

Hmm.

Thoughts about that, the Justice Department and the influence of the president?

Jonathan.

So, I mean, this particular prosecution was not done by the U.S. Justice Department.

Of course, it was by the New York State, you know, district attorney.

So you can talk about maybe there is political influence, you know, going on in the background, but there's no actual formal, you know, control of the president of United States over the the New York district attorney's.

So the other cases, there are also levels of insulation.

But, you know, there are at least federal prosecutions.

This is, however, was a state prosecution.

So have one last thought here from Jeff who sends an email saying you gave two options, cheer the conviction or believe it's a conspiracy.

He says, I think there's a third option.

It's a legitimate conviction, but no cheering.

It doesn't seem a serious enough a crime for an ex-president or presidential candidate to be prosecuted for.

I'm sure past presidents have committed more serious offenses and none have been indicted or prosecuted.

This sets a bad precedent and it's a bad look for our country.

That's Jeff's point of view.

The Ohio House and Senate reconvene this week for a rare compulsory special session ordered by the governor before they could get to the business of passing an administrative fix to put President Biden on the November ballot in Ohio.

The Democratic National Committee made the issue moot by announcing it would hold a virtual session to certify Biden as its nominee well in advance of the deadline to make the Ohio ballot.

today.

The House and Senate convened this week compulsory session that the governor called the first order of business was to get President Biden on the ballot.

That ended up becoming moot because of what the Democratic National Committee did.

Yeah, the special session was called to both deal with the 90 day deadline for getting on to Ohio's ballot being before the Democratic National Convention.

So Governor Mike DeWine said he wanted lawmakers to fix that, as well as to ban contributions from foreign nationals in ballot issue campaigns.

And so starting on Tuesday, I'll spare you some of the back and forth and the debates over what numbers Bill should be and all of this.

What ended up happening was yesterday, while the Senate passed a bill, then the House passed two bills yesterday.

Now we're waiting to see what happens with the Senate today.

But yeah, the Beau Biden ballot fixes is moot because the Democratic National Convention in all of this, the Democratic National Committee said they're going to do a virtual roll call like they did in 2020.

And nominate Biden that way.

They're going to do it before Ohio's deadline.

And so it won't be an issue regardless of what lawmakers do about the 90 day deadline for this year.

Still, the House passed HB two, which is its own fix.

So it's like we said, it's moot, but they're still doing it.

We'll see what the Senate says today.

And it's a temporary fix.

I mean, there's no permanent fix here.

And it's interesting because since the law was passed in 2020, creating that and I'm sorry, in 2010, creating that 90 day deadline, three of the four presidential cycles have been affected by that and had to move that deadline three of the four cycles.

And not just Democrats.

No, this is the first time it was only Democrats.

And let me let me ask you this, too.

Then the other bill was HB one.

That's the one about foreign money in issues campaigns.

It's already illegal to be giving money to candidates or to parties.

This would extend it.

Democrat to oppose this, they say, Yeah, of course we don't want foreign influence, but this has a pernicious effect.

What do they say?

Well, they say that this is really designed because there is a ballot issue coming up that is likely to be before voters in November that would overhaul how redistricting is done, replacing the Republican dominated Ohio redistricting with a 15 member commission of Republicans, Democrats and independents.

Democrats say Republicans don't want that and they want to change the rules so that it will be affected and Republicans say, hey, we've been wanting to do this for a while.

Now's the time to do it.

But certainly the push for that seems to be tied to this ballot issue coming up.

And there's other issues, too.

There's a hike in the minimum wage that could come up before voters this year.

And so that's been, I think, the driving force behind a lot of this.

Former House Speaker Larry Householder, convicted on federal corruption charges and sentenced to 20 years in federal lockup, was arraigned by video in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas court Friday on state charges.

Stephanie, you're your guy.

Matt Richmond was there.

What do we what do we know from this morning?

Well, householder was arraigned via Zoom.

He pleaded not guilty.

He's currently in the Elkton Federal Prison.

And so that's what's happened.

It happened this morning.

He's been charged by the Ohio AG with theft in office and, you know, a handful of other crimes related to the HP sex scandal.

Yeah.

And the he also in today said, why am I in Cleveland, Right.

Why is this trial in Cleveland?

Absolutely.

And Will, they're going to fight that out, it sounds like.

And I should add, I've been talking to Matt Richmond as well, because if I weren't here covering the special session, I would certainly want to be in Cuyahoga County Court for this.

And he said that householder looks a little slimmer than he has been, which is something to note, I guess.

He's been in prison almost a year now.

So and again, that's federal prison.

These are state charges.

So it's different and we wait to see what happens.

Right.

And just to I think everybody knows, but he was in the federal case involved in the HP sex scandal, the nuclear bail out.

It's part of a $60 million bribery scheme.

First Energy admitted to paying the bribes.

Now we have these state charges, one of which would make it so that he could never run for office again.

Now, there's another former House speaker, Cliff Rosenberger, who was under FBI investigation before HOUSEHOLDER.

And we just got word this week he got a rare letter from the FBI saying he was no longer a target.

KAREN That's that's not something you usually see.

Yeah, it's an FBI closing letter.

And I talked to his attorney, David David Axelrod, who says he's only seen a closing letter a handful of times in his career.

And the letter basically says that they're not investigating Cliff Rosenberger anymore.

They had been looking at him because of travel connected to payday lenders.

And that led to he says it led to his resignation.

And in 2018, that householder was connected to that, according to Rosenberger, and he tried to make that claim in federal court under the Crime Victims Rights Act, which the judge denied.

But it's interesting that the former speaker is pointing fingers at the former speaker for starting all of this kind of revolving that was happening at the Ohio speaker's chamber for a while.

Never a dull moment.

Never.

Akron's police auditor is recommending criminal charges be pursued against a former officer who was fired earlier this month.

The city cut ties with officer Ryan Westlake after two use of force incidents.

The same officer shot and injured a 15 year old in April.

He was carrying a toy gun.

That case remains under investigation.

But Andrew, the police auditor says he thinks the officer's conduct in a use of force incident in March involving a teen may warrant a child endangering charge.

And his questions about the conduct of supervisors in that case, too.

In this case, there is a 15 year old who was suspected of shoplift an officer.

Westlake can be seen on the body cam footage or actually the nearby camera footage that was obtained slamming the 15 year old into the side of his car.

So the police auditor, Anthony Finnell, determined that this was way, way, way out of bounds and is recommending criminal prosecution of Westlake, who, as you said, has already been fired from the job.

We'll see whether or not he's appealing that and whether he can get back on the job.

But I think what this calls into question is what is the true power of the Citizens Police Oversight board and the police auditor.

He can recommend that there be a criminal prosecution, but it's not up to him to actually institute a prosecution.

And this is a test for the new chief who was just sworn in this week, Brian Harding.

That's right.

And Harding says has said that this was the proper thing for Westlake to be fired.

But Brian Harding is very much about community engagement.

It's one of his drivers in terms of when he was speaking at town hall meetings ahead of being appointed chief.

He says it's not just lip service, it's something he's going to practice day in, day out.

They need to reestablish Akron police, good connections with the community, and it's got to be more than lip service.

So this is a chance for him to follow through on that.

The other part of the swearing in this week when it was announced the swearing in was going on and this didn't get as much media attention last week when the swearing in was announced on Monday, the same day the mayor's office also announced it was appointing a committee to look into getting a the right language onto the November ballot.

So that Akron voters can weigh in on diversifying the Akron Police Department.

They're council members on that, some state legislators on that as well.

The mayor not just, again, going with lip service.

Yeah, I got to get Harding into the job because he's the right person at the right time to be in there when we need somebody in there.

Now and we'll deal with this later and just kicking the can.

He's actually saying, okay, we got the guy in.

Now we're going to deal with reforming the police, making sure that it's a more diverse leadership within the Akron police.

the fire damage at the historic St Theodosius Orthodox Cathedral in Tremont, famous for its role in the Academy Award winning movie The Deer Hunter, is estimated at $1,000,000.

stuff.

The Division of Fire says this was an accident.

Roofers.

That's right.

They were having construction done and it appears that there was an accident and a fire.

You know, the structure caught fire.

It's absolutely heartbreaking.

I mean, the world knows this structure from Deer Hunter, but Cleveland knows it because it's just an iconic building now, the onion domes, it's just a beautiful structure.

It is.

And even if you don't attend services there, this is this is part of our heritage here.

So also, it was interesting to see that there were citizens and parishioners and and clergy all getting together to go in and grab historic and holy items from the church to preserve them.

Yeah, I mean, these structures and the role that they play in communities and families over generations are really important to people in Cleveland.

So Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 80 97w KSU.

As Pride Month begins, we'll talk to city leaders who are part of the LGBTQ plus community in Ohio amid growing discrimination.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.