Donald Trump is now a convicted felon, but President Joe Biden’s campaign is harboring no illusions as to whether it will affect who they square off against in this November’s presidential election.
In a statement issued not long after a New York City jury convicted Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records, Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said the verdict against the felonious ex-president vindicated the American system of justice.
“In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law,” he said.
Mr Tyler noted that Trump had operated under a mistaken belief that he “would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain,” but he stressed that the verdict against the ex-president will have no effect on the “simple reality” that will be faced by the American people when they vote for a president in just over five months.
“There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president,” he said.
Mr Tyler added that Trump has never been a greater threat to American democracy, citing his “increasingly unhinged campaign of revenge and retribution,” his pledge to be a dictator on the first day of his term if elected, and his calls to “terminate” the US constitution as a way for him to “regain and keep power”.
“A second Trump term means chaos, ripping away Americans’ freedoms and fomenting political violence – and the American people will reject it this November,” he said.
There was no immediate reaction to the unprecedented verdict from Mr Biden, who was with family in Delaware marking the ninth anniversary of his late son Beau Biden’s death from brain cancer.
The 46th president has heretofore refrained from speaking out about criminal matters involving Trump, who still faces three other cases against him in three separate jurisdictions.
A White House official told The Independent that Mr Biden would not be speaking about the result at this time, but left the door open for him to do so in the future.
But the statement from Mr Biden’s campaign is a strong indicator that he and his surrogates will not shy away from describing Trump as a convicted felon, even as he runs to regain his former position as president.