- Donald Trump’s hush-money verdict was announced just as trial attendees expected to go home for the day.
- A court artist, Christine Cornell, said Trump began shaking his head after the fifth “guilty.”
- “He looked very demolished by it. He really did,” Cornell said.
Donald Trump looked “demolished” after being found guilty of 34 counts of felony falsifying business records, said a veteran court sketch artist who captured the moment for history.
“He looked very demolished by it. He really did,” the artist, Christine Cornell, told Business Insider after Thursday’s verdict.
The jury had sent out a note reading, “We the jury have reached a verdict,” at 4:20 p.m., just as trial attendees were expecting to leave the crowded Manhattan courtroom and go home for the day.
Everyone — including Trump, apparently — had figured that court would end at 4:30 p.m. and that the jury would just return Friday to keep deliberating.
“He was feeling a little upbeat — that we were all going to be able to go home,” Cornell said of Trump. “So if anyone was the most surprised there was a verdict, it was him.
Then came the verdict note. Cornell finished a chalk-pastel drawing showing Trump waiting pensively while chatting with his lawyer Todd Blanche.
Then the jurors filed in, and at 5:05 p.m., the first “guilty” was recited by the jury foreman.
Cornell was well-situated to watch Trump’s body language, sitting in the second row and across the aisle, right behind Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the indictment.
After hearing the word “guilty” for the fifth of 34 times, Trump began shaking his head as he sat at the defense table, she said.
Cornell, who didn’t have a verdict sketch pre-prepared, was meanwhile sketching away.
“I drew the verdict in the middle of the verdict,” she said. “I got everybody in there, though.”
The posture of the foreman caught Cornell’s eye, she said.
“It was an unusual stance,” she said of the foreman, a salesman who was born in Ireland and spoke with a slight brogue.
“It’s like he was propping one hand forward on the rail of the jury box,” she said. “He was quite serious.”
Afterward, Trump appeared deflated, said Cornell, whose 30-year career has included sketching the trials of the Gambino mobster John Gotti, the Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, the Central Park Five, the subway vigilante Bernie Goetz, and even the former Filipino First Lady Imelda Marcos.
“As he walked by me, he started to swing his arms in what was sort of a hopeless gesture,” Cornell said of Trump.
Trump must return to court on July 11 for sentencing. He faces anywhere from no prison time to four years.
Experts have said a sentence of incarceration is unlikely, given that Trump has been convicted of a low-level, non-violent felony and is — at least for now — a first offender.
He has three more indictments yet to be tried.
