history, we arrived at this trial and ultimately today at this verdict in the same manner as every other case that comes through the courtroom doors, by following the facts and the law and doing so without fear or favor. many voices out there, the only voice that matters is the voice of the jury. and the jury has spoken. >> that's manhattan district attorney alvin bragg following the historic conviction of donald trump on all 34 counts in his hush money trial. we'll have expert legal analysis on the verdict and the timeline for trump's sentencing. also ahead we'll bring you reaction from republicans who rushed to trump's defense yesterday as well as president joe biden's response to the verdict. plus, the conviction has many people wondering if trump can still run for president. we'll go through the what impact if any this all has on november's election. good morning and welcome to "way too early" on this friday, may 31st. i'm jonathan lemire. katty kay is alongside this morning. for the first time in american history a former u.s. president has been tried in a court of law and has been convicted of a crime. late yesterday a jury of 12 new yorkers found former president donald trump guilty on all 34 felony counts against him in his hush money criminal trial. the verdict was read just around 5:00 p.m. eastern in a new york city courtroom after jurors deliberated for roughly 9 1/2 hours over two days. each of the 34 counts is associated with a falsified business record pertaining to trump's reimbursement of his former attorney and fixer, michael cohen, for a hush money payment to adult film actress stormy daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign in order to keep her quiet about a sexual encounter she says that she had with trump back in 2006. trump all along has denied her claim. sentencing is set for july 11th, which is just four days before the republican national convention begins in milwaukee when trump would officially become the gop nominee for president. the maximum sentence for falsification of business records is four years in prison, but incarceration is not a mandatory sentence for this crime. it will be judge juan merchan who ultimately decides the punishment. we have been looking at this case for a long time. people wonder what it means. we'll get into that all morning long. there's no question yesterday felt significant. >> yeah, and in the end it was stormy daniels who triggered all of this, who was the one who brought donald trump down when all of the other cases for various reasons got delayed, pushed back until after the election. there may have been stronger cases. there may have been more consequential cases in terms of politics and legality, but yesterday we heard 12 american jurors decided on all 34 counts that donald trump was guilty of the charges that were leveled against him. and speaking to reporters after the verdict was read, trump again, however, proclaimed his innocence and repeated his frequent false claim about the judicial system being rigged against him. >> this was a disgrace. this was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt. it's a rigged trial and disgraced. the real verdict is going to be november 5th by the people, and they know what happened here and everybody knows what happened here. you have to show respect, d.a., and the whole thing. we didn't do a thing wrong. i'm an innocent man. we have a country that's in big trouble, but this was a rigged decision right from day one with a conflicted judge who should have never been allowed to try this case, never. and we will fight for our constitution. >> we have to fact check that. there is no evidence the system is rigged. later on the now convicted former president took to truth social to announce a press conference going to be scheduled for 11:00 eastern time today. that will take place from trump tower in manhattan. and i'm hearing -- i don't know what you're hearing but i'm hearing from people in the trump's orbit this is now the beginning, john, as one of the put it to me as a gop civil war to see who's on his side and who's thought. >> it very well could be, and we certainly saw a more deflated trump than we're used to in those remarks. right now for trump not much has changed in his ability to run for president, however. the constitution only has three qualifications for someone to campaign for the presidency. they must be a natural born citizen, must be at least 35 years old, and must have lived in america for 14 years. the constitution does not mention anything about felony convictions. and this isn't the first time in american history that someone was found guilty and then ran for the white house. back in 1920 eugene debbs campaigned from a prison cell in atlanta as the socialist party nominee after he was found guilty of sedition. trump will likely be allowed to vote in the upcoming election so long as he's not sentenced to jail. the state of new york only restricts voting rights for people who are incarcerated. joining us now msnbc legal analyst danny cevallos and charles coleman. danny, let's start with you here on set. what was your reaction to the verdict? >> any one, any lawyer, anyone who says they knew what was going to happen is making it up. it is really easy now to say i see how the jury had their path to a conviction, and i think a lot of people did say that prior to the verdict, but you never know. no lawyer ever knows, no regular citizen ever knows. you do not know until they render the verdict, and i suspect over the weeks and years as we perhaps hear from some of those jurors, i predict we will be surprised at some of the things they seized upon and some of the things that maybe weren't as important to them. so overall i mean the next big question is sentencing, what will happen at sentencing. and my big question is what will the prosecution seek given that they know that the odds are i think somewhat in favor of a nonincarceration sentence, what political decision will the manhattan d.a.'s office make in asking for an incarceration sentence or probation or whatever it is they choose to ask for in their sentencing memorandum. >> charles, where with your reaction taking on what danny was just saying there, what are the legal decisions now that the judge is facing when it comes to how to sentence donald trump? what's he going to weighing specifically? >> i think danny said it nicely. he has to consider donald trump who prior to this had no legal contacts or with respect to the justice system. and so this is his first offense he's been convicted of or even arrested for that matter. and that's going to weigh heavily in terms of the sentencing guidelines, and also there's a notion for donald trump's previous disregard for the rule of law in respect to the gag order and not necessarily regarding judge merchan's personal attacks or the attacks made upon him personally but just the overall sense of the gag order imposed upon donald trump in his repeated violations of that. i think that's also going to factor in to how the judge ultimately factors into his sentencing with respect to donald trump and his now conviction on these 34 felony counts. >> danny, he was convicted of all 34. first of all, give us your sense that was a surprise. there was some thought it wouldn't be unanimous like that. and the fact it is all 34, does that hurt -- explain to the lay people out there. does that hurt trump's sentence on appeal or strengthen the sentence against him? >> i wasn't surprised they were all 34 counts. let's say a structuring case or certain cases involving bank deposits, there might be differences in say the days or how the transactions were made or the the intent behind them, but here you had 34 counts and you could really divide them by three as you see that really helpful graph there. each of these were divisible by three because for each check you had the voucher and then you had the invoice, and they were all related. so it really was in a way more closer to 11 or 10 counts they had to parse through, but i think that the prosecution did a good job of framing it that, look, if you find he was deceptive, if you find this general the intent, you can sort of apply it to all these counts because the 34 counts really aren't 34 counts, and it was really the same the intent. the dollar amount was almost exactly the same, however i did think there was a small possibility that among the differences, for example, donald trump didn't sign all the checks. i know that may not sound like a big deal to a lot of people, but they like images, they like graphics and they see a check someone else other than donald trump, they say, well, i think we got them on that because there's that signature in that giant sharpy, but we don't have him there. and they say the invoices were generated by someone else, but the checks clearly donald trump signed them, that's on him. maybe they might have only convicted on the checks you see right there, only the checks and not the invoices or the vouchers. but all in all i don't think too many people were surprised it was all or nothing here. >> charles, just to dig a bit more into the sentencing, we seem to be in agreement, most legal analysts seem to be in agreement it's not a violent crime, so what would the time frame of those punishments be? how would they impact his ability to campaign potentially? >> because it's a felony he has a year and a day at a minimum that would need to or that's eligible for what he can be sentenced to. i think that home confinement is not necessarily out of the question. certainly a large fine is something he's going to be staring at. there could be anywhere between probation and some period of probation after. and obviously that is going to have a tremendous impact on his ability to be out on the campaign trail. he would be able to ostensibly campaign from his home in terms of how many and that kind of thing. it's just a matter of him where he can be physically, and i think that's going to be question if there is a period of home confinement, the judge could potentially put it up to at least over a year. but i don't necessarily see that happening even if he doesn't post some degree of home confinement. and that's going to be the impact it'll have on his ability because he won't be able to get out, to travel, go to campaign rallies, to reach out and touch the people he likes to do in terms of how he likes to campaign and get up his acolytes. >> charles, very briefly, that home confinement does that necessity an ankle bracelet or not necessarily? >> not in all cases. i don't know necessarily in this case it would, but it could and that's up to judge merchan's discretion. >> msnbc legal analyst john cevallos. there's a lot we don't know. the punishment and how they could be enacted and how severe it might be. but it's interesting hearing from people who know donald trump and have known him for years, all have said to me he must be absolutely furious at the moment, that this is the kind of thing where he feels out of control, and as one put it to me, it makes him boil. >> furious and terrified, despite the bluster and harsh rhetoric we've heard for months, people have been telling me along he doesn't want go to prison and be a martyr. we're now in uncharted territory in terms of the politics of all this, and we should note as the verdict came down yesterday president biden was in delaware to mark the ninth anniversary of his son beau's death. in an official statement the white house council's office wrote simply this we respect the rule of law and have no additional comment. president biden writing in his twitter "x" account there's only one way to keep donald trump out of the office, donate to our campaign today. in new york today we saw no one is above the law. donald trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law. it does not change americans face a simple reality. there's only way way to keep donald trump out of office, at the ballot box. convicted felon or not trump will be the republican nominee for president. a democratic strategist familiar with the biden campaign's thinking tell nbc news they're looking at the bigger picture of the campaign and it won't be a central message. the same strategist added biden will focus on what matters to democracy, personal freedoms. as i reported president biden has made silent on this legal process throughout and we will likely hear from him in the days ahead in an informal setting more than likely. not some sort of oval office address but simply fielding a question from a reporter, he will be at the white house later today, and he's expected to talk about the need to respect the verdict and how the american legal system worked. in the days ahead we'll hear more from the campaign about how this verdict means trump is not fit for office, but they do not expect this to be a central campaign issue. this will simply be part of a larger case they built. still ahead we'll have of course much, much more on the historic guilty verdict for trump now the first former president ever to be convicted of a crime. plus we'll bring you new reporting on a major policy shift from the biden administration on ukraine, now giving the country permission to use u.s. weapons to strike inside russia. that story and a check on the weekend weather forecast when we come right back. d weather forece come right back. ah, these bills are crazy. she has no idea she's sitting on a goldmine. well she doesn't know that if she owns a life insurance policy of $100,000 or more she can sell all or part of it to coventry for cash. even a term policy. even a term policy? even a term policy! find out if you're sitting on a goldmine. call coventry direct today at the number on your screen, or visit coventrydirect.com. i don't want you to move. i'm gonna miss you so much. you realize we'll have 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this particular moment anyway. the white house is set to hold a meeting between u.s., egyptian, and israeli officials to discuss reopening the rafah crossing. the crossing has been closed since the u.s. seized control of the gaza side earlier this month. egypt has said it wouldn't cross it, the border is vital to getting humanitarian aid into gaza, but israel believes hamas has been using it to smuggle in weapons. now officials are set to meet in cairo next week to discuss a plan to secure the egypt and gaza border. according to axios the trip was agreed on during a phone call last friday between president biden and egypt's leader. biden reportedly threatened to publicly criticize egypt if it did not resume the delivery of aid trucks into gaza. that could happen soon. the humanitarian section of course in gaza deteriorating by the day without those aid trucks getting in. >> truly dire situation there as we wait to see what israel's next move in the region will be. next up on "way too 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