An American flag is seen upside down at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, on May 31, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Upside-down American flags emerged outside homes and on social media on May 31 in support of Donald Trump after a New York jury returned a historic guilty verdict against the former Republican president.

Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and country music singer Jason Aldean were among the prominent Americans to display the inverted flag, a symbol of distress or protest in America for over 200 years.

The symbol, popular among some avid Trump supporters since his 2020 election defeat, exploded across pro-Trump social media accounts after he was convicted on Thursday of falsifying documents to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star to illegally influence the 2016 election.

Minutes after the verdict Greene, a Trump loyalist, posted an inverted U.S. flag on her X account. By Friday afternoon more than 8 million people had viewed it.

Mr. Aldean posted an inverted flag on his Instagram account, saying: “Scary times in our country right now, man.” He added: “If there was ever a time to speak up, ITS NOW! Make no mistake. We are in trouble.”

Don Tapia, a former Trump ambassador to Jamaica and a Republican donor, flew an inverted flag outside his Arizona home. He said he had received phone calls of support and that motorists had honked as they drove by. “Will switch back Sunday to regular flag,” he told Reuters by text message.

Dan Bongino, a conservative radio talk show host who interviewed Trump on his show on Wednesday, posted an inverted U.S. flag on his X account after the verdict. It had received 250,000 views by mid-afternoon on Friday.

A Miami chapter of the Proud Boys, a far-right militant group, posted an inverted flag on the message channel Telegram, as did a similar group called Patriot Voice, with the words: “In dire distress.”

Also read | Biden says questioning Trump’s guilty verdict is ‘dangerous’ and ‘irresponsible’

On pro-Trump corners of the internet, some supporters called for riots, revolution and violent retribution.

The symbolic inverting of the flag drew nationwide attention when the New York Times reported in mid-May that an upside-down Stars and Stripes was flown outside the home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in the weeks after the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters rioting in protest at his 2020 election defeat.

Mr. Alito, a conservative appointed to the court by Republican former President George W. Bush, told the Times he had “no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag.” He said his wife raised the inverted flag over a neighborhood dispute.

Trump, the first former president to be convicted of a crime, said on Friday he will appeal the verdict. He is locked in a tight race with Democratic President Joe Biden ahead of their November. 5 election rematch.

Staring down a bank of cameras inside Manhattan’s Trump Tower, he rattled off a list of adversaries and grievances in rambling remarks while vowing to keep on fighting.

An upside-down U.S. flag was first used by sailors in the 1700s to signal distress, said presidential historian Timothy Naftali. It has since taken on a long history of political symbolism on the American left as well as the right.

It was used in the anti-slavery movement in the mid-1800s and was carried by anti-Vietnam War protesters in the 1960s, said Mr. Naftali, a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

He said it was ironic that when Vietnam War protesters inverted the flag or burned it, Republicans generally decried that.

“We live in an era now where the deepest and most virulent conspiracies about the nature of our Constitution are on the right. Inverting the flag is part of that,” he said.

An inverted U.S. flag was flown by some people protesting the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minnesota police officer in 2020.

It was carried by people protesting the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2022 to end the federal right to an abortion.

Trump and his Republican supporters have in recent years decried Black football players taking a knee during the playing of the U.S. national anthem, known as the Star-Spangled Banner, itself a reference to the flag.

In their opening statement at Donald Trump’s criminal trial, the prosecutors seeking to win the first-ever criminal conviction of a sitting or former U.S. president made a bold prediction: they would have hard evidence to back up testimony from Michael Cohen, the star witness branded a liar by the defense.

Over the next several weeks, jurors heard testimony from insiders at Mr. Trump’s real estate company, his 2016 presidential campaign, and his White House that methodically backed up the two core elements of Manhattan District Alvin Bragg’s case: that Mr. Trump was aware of a “catch-and-kill” conspiracy to buy the silence of people with negative information before the election, and that he was involved in a cover-up of Cohen’s hush money payment to a porn star.

That testimony — coupled with evidence such as bank records, emails and a surreptitious recording of Trump speaking about a hush money payment — culminated in the 12-member jury finding Mr. Trump guilty of criminal charges.

Its verdict: He illegally falsified business records to hide his reimbursement to Cohen for the $130,000 Cohen paid to buy the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election about an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump in 2006.

To be sure, jury deliberations are secret and the reasoning behind the decision to convict will not be clear unless any jurors decide to speak publicly. Trump is almost certain to appeal his conviction.

Cohen testified at the trial in New York state criminal court in Manhattan that the reimbursement payments were falsely labeled as legal retainer fees in Trump’s family real estate company’s books. Cohen said Trump directed him to pay off Daniels, and that he would not have done so without getting paid back.

“He stated to me that he had spoken to some friends, some individuals, very smart people, and that: ‘It’s $130,000. You’re like a billionaire. Just pay it,’” Cohen said on May 13. “And he expressed to me: ‘Just do it.’”

The verdict vindicated Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who was criticized by both Trump’s fellow Republicans and some of Bragg’s fellow Democrats for bringing a case involving well-known allegations of sexual impropriety, even if the transaction that mattered was financial.

Bragg argued the case was truly about an effort to corrupt the 2016 election – not sex.

“It was the subversion of democracy,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said in his May 28 closing statement. The “catch-and-kill” conspiracy, he said, was meant “to manipulate and defraud the voters, to pull the wool over their eyes in a coordinated fashion.”

The case is widely viewed as less consequential than the other three criminal cases Mr. Trump faces on charges over efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democratic President Joe Biden and his retention of sensitive government documents after leaving the White House in 2021.

Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty in the other three cases, which are unlikely to reach juries before his Nov. 5 election rematch with Mr. Biden.

‘Out of character’

One challenge for Bragg’s case was Cohen’s credibility. Cohen went to prison after pleading guilty in 2018 to violating campaign finance law with the payment to Daniels and lying to Congress in 2017 about a Trump Organization real estate project in Russia. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche hounded Cohen on cross-examination about his lies to journalists and an instance in which he stole from Trump’s company.

So prosecutors needed plenty of evidence backing up Cohen’s testimony that Trump was aware of Cohen’s payment to Daniels, which they argued was part of a broader conspiracy to buy the silence of people with potentially negative information about Trump in violation of campaign finance laws.

Jurors did not have to rely solely on Cohen’s testimony to accept that Trump intended to conceal that alleged conspiracy by labeling his 2017 payments to Cohen as legal retainer fees.

David Pecker, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, testified that he agreed at an August 2015 meeting with Trump and Cohen to be the campaign’s “eyes and ears” for women coming forward with unflattering stories about Trump.

Jurors heard a tape Cohen surreptitiously recorded of Mr. Trump on Sept. 6, 2016, discussing a hush money payment Pecker’s company made to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who says she had a year-long affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007. Trump denied having ever had a sexual relationship with her or with Daniels.

Jurors saw phone records showing Cohen had several calls with Trump and his bodyguard Keith Schiller – whom Cohen said would hand his phone to Trump – around the time of frantic negotiations with Daniels’ lawyer over the payment in October 2016.

In some of his most damning testimony, Cohen said he, Mr. Trump and then-Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg discussed the repayment plan in a January 2017 meeting shortly before Trump’s inauguration as president.

Weisselberg, who is serving a five-month jail sentence after pleading guilty to perjury in a separate case, did not testify for either side at the trial. But jurors saw Weisselberg’s handwritten notes – jotted down on a copy of the wire transfer receipt for Cohen’s payment to Daniels’ lawyer – with instructions as to how Trump Organization controller Jeff McConney should pay Cohen. McConney testified that he understood the payments to be a reimbursement for Cohen, not legal fees.

Hope Hicks, a former communications aide of Trump’s, recalled Trump telling her that Cohen paid Daniels “out of the kindness of his own heart” – consistent with the defense’s efforts to distance Trump himself from the hush money deals.

But Hicks expressed skepticism of that claim.

“That,” Hicks testified on May 3, “would be out of character for Michael.”

People look at Fox News screens displaying news announcing that a jury found former U.S. President Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts in his criminal trial in New York State Supreme Court, in New York City, on May 30, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Donald Trump, the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime, will remain a free man while he awaits sentencing and could avoid a prison term entirely for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star. Here is a look at what’s next for the Republican candidate for President against Democratic President Joe Biden in a November 5 election.

What happens now?

The judge presiding over the case, Juan Merchan, must first approve the verdict and enter a final judgment, though this is typically a formality.

Criminal defendants in New York are typically sentenced within several weeks of conviction, but post-verdict legal wrangling can sometimes lead to months of delays. In the meantime, lawyers and prosecutors will recommend sentences and then argue over them at Trump’s sentencing hearing, where Merchan will make a decision.

Will Trump go to prison?

That is unlikely.

The maximum sentence for Mr. Trump’s crime of falsifying business records is 1-1/3 to four years in prison.

It is rare for people with no criminal history who are convicted only of falsification of business records to be sentenced to prison in New York. Punishments like fines or probation are more common.

Defendants convicted of falsifying business records who get sentenced to time behind bars typically serve a year or less, and even in those cases most were convicted of other crimes such as fraud or grand larceny — unlike Mr. Trump

If punished beyond a fine, Mr. Trump could be placed under home confinement or subject to a curfew rather than imprisoned.

As a former President, he has a lifetime Secret Service detail, and the logistics of keeping him safe behind bars could be complicated.

Mr. Trump could also be released on bail while appealing his conviction.

Can Trump appeal the conviction?

Yes. Mr. Trump is likely to make arguments that Merchan rejected ahead of trial, including that the indictment is legally flawed and politically motivated. He is also likely to argue Merchan deprived him of a fair trial by making legal errors, including allowing salacious testimony by a porn star who said she had sex with Mr. Trump — testimony his lawyers said was gratuitous and aimed at inflaming the jury against him.

The defense is likely to argue that the charges themselves were legally improper. Falsifying business records on its own is a misdemeanor in New York, but is elevated to a felony when done to help commit or conceal another crime. In this case, Bragg’s office said that other crime was a conspiracy to violate a state election law.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyers have argued that state law does not apply to federal elections.

Could Trump still be President?

Yes. The U.S. Constitution only requires that presidents be at least 35 years old and natural-born U.S. citizens who have lived in the country for 14 years.

In theory, Trump could be sworn in from jail or prison on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2025, if he were to unseat Biden.