Boris Johnson chimes in on Trump’s guilty verdict with ‘pathetic’ take

The first UK prime minister found to have broken the law while in office has shared his thoughts on Donald Trump becoming the first US president with a criminal conviction, in an opinion piece for the Daily Mail which has been branded “pathetic” and “nonsense” online.

Boris Johnson was – rather infamously – issued a fine by the Metropolitan Police for attending a party in Downing Street, while strict social distancing measures were in place as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Meanwhile Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for November’s presidential election (running again following a stint in the White House from 2016 to 2020 before being defeated by Joe Biden), was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in a unanimous verdict from jurors in New York on Thursday.

The case surrounded alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election. Trump has already been found liable for sexual abuse in a civil lawsuit brought by writer E Jean Carroll.

Speaking outside court following the announcement, the Apprentice star slammed the “rigged” trial and branded it “a disgrace”, telling reporters: “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.

“We’ll keep fighting - we’ll fight till the end and we’ll win because our country has gone to hell. We don’t have the same country anymore; we have a divided mess.

“We’re a nation in decline, serious decline, millions and millions of people pouring into our country right now, from prisons and from mental institutions, terrorists, and they’re taking over our country,” he said.

A sentencing hearing has been set for 11 July.

Now, in an article published on Friday, Johnson has labelled Trump’s criminal trial as a “machine-gun mob-style hit-job” on the former president.

That’s a lot of hyphens.

He writes: “It was nakedly political. It was completely artificial. The Democrat prosecutors thought they were being so clever: tripping Trump up over this technicality – like collaring Al Capone for tax evasion, they probably told themselves.

“Except that everyone with any common sense can see what I consider their real motives, how they were combing the rule book for stuff to use against Trump, how they went trawling for witnesses to testify against him, no matter how tainted or how biased.

“The vast mass of American voters could see what I believe was really happening: that the liberal elites were just appalled at Trump's continuing popularity and his ability to connect with voters – and they were using anything they could find to derail his campaign.

“It is one of the oldest tricks in the anti-democratic handbook. If you can't defeat a candidate at the ballot box, get the lawyers on to it and paper him or her with writs.”

The ex-Uxbridge and South Ruislip MP concluded by arguing the pursuit of legal cases against Trump has made his chances of winning the presidency later this year “more likely, not less”.

Twitter/X, however, isn’t all that impressed with Johnson’s take:

Although Johnson famously left parliament before a report by MPs found he had misled the Commons over Partygate, it’s clear he hasn’t strayed too far away from UK politics and those in charge.

Speaking on The Daily T podcast, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “We’ve been in touch. We were in touch just the other day actually talking about the risk that Starmer would pose to our country’s security and the damage he would do.”

He was also asked whether Johnson may join him on the campaign trail, to which the Conservative Party leader replied: “That’s a question for him. He’s a busy guy as well.”

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