The across-the-board guilty verdicts against former President Donald Trump on Thursday were met with a mix of shock, elation and sober reflection by politicians and political organizations across the Bay Area and Northern California.
Leaders across the region were swift and often unsparing in their reactions as America plunged into a new era with the first-ever felony conviction of a former president. Many local Democrats celebrated the jury’s decision to find Trump guilty of 34 counts related to hush money payments ahead of the 2016 presidential election, while others — including Rep. Anna Eshoo, who represents much of Silicon Valley — called it simply “a sobering moment.”
“Donald Trump is a convicted felon,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, an East Bay Democrat. “This verdict is not a win for any single person. It’s a win for an idea. The idea that we all follow the same rules. The rule of law won today.”
“Guilty,” wrote U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The California Democrat was lead House manager during Trump’s first impeachment trial, and he’s also in a runoff for one of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats this November. “Today, twelve ordinary American citizens found a former president guilty of dozens of felonies. Despite his efforts to distract, delay, and deny – justice arrived for Donald Trump all the same. And the rule of law prevailed.”
Yet the chairwoman of the California Republican Party, Jessica Millan, derided the verdict as “a dark day for our justice system and for our nation,” and suggested that the nation’s voters would see past the verdict at ballot boxes this fall.
“From the very beginning, this was a politically-motivated case brought by a far-left district attorney,” Millan’s statement said. “Despite Democrat-led efforts to interfere with the presidential election, Americans will have the final say in November when they re-elect President Trump and send him to the White House to fix the many failures of the Biden Administration and put our nation on a pathway to to success.”
The stunning verdict — the first of its kind in the nation’s history — came after a New York jury deliberated for 9.5 hours; the jurors had heard weeks of testimony over whether the former president falsified tax records in a scheme to illegally influence the results of the 2016 presidential election. The trial’s results leave Trump at risk of prison time when he is sentenced on July 11 — a never-before-witnessed prospect in American politics, given that Trump also is the leading Republican candidate for the White House in this fall’s presidential election.
Several Republicans reacted in disgust to the jury’s decision. Harmeet Kaur Dhillon, a former vice chairwoman of the California Republican Party, called the verdict “a disgrace,” and said she was “ashamed” of the New York legal system, where she got her start as a lawyer three decades ago.
“If they can do this to the leading presidential candidate, they can do it to any of us,” Dhillon tweeted. “It should be overturned on appeal and I’m voting TRUMP! Are you with me?”
Caitlyn Jenner, a longtime Republican who led an unsuccessful bid to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom in the 2021 recall election, posted a picture to X of her and Trump embracing, adding in all capital letters that “the only verdict that matters is the vote of we the people, of the USA, on November 5, 2024!”
Yet many politicians across the reliably-blue Bay Area heralded the unprecedented nature of Thursday’s verdict, while suggesting that Trump was facing a reckoning years in the making.
“I commend the brave public servants that worked to perform their civic duty under extraordinary circumstances,” said U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, in a tweet. “Even a former president must be brought to justice.”
“I said it in 2018 and I’ll say it today: no one is above the law,” tweeted U.S. Rep Jared Huffman, who represents Marin County and much of Northern California’s coastal communities.
Added California Sen. Alex Padilla in a social media post of his own: “In the United States of America, no one is above the law — including a former president.” Fellow California Sen. Laphonza Butler tweeted a similar sentiment, suggesting that “today’s verdict proves that ours is a nation of laws and it remains true that no one is above it.”
Check back for updates to this developing story.
Bay Area News Group reporters Kate Talerico, Nollyanne Delacruz, Grace Hase and John Woolfolk contributed to this story, as did the Associated Press.