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From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to Free Expression from the Wall Street Journal.

I'm Jerry Baker, editor-at-large of the journal.

If you're not already a subscriber to the Free Expression podcast, please do sign up wherever you do your podcast listening.

This week, a conviction politician.

Just in case you may somehow have been asleep and missed the events of the last few days, last week a former and potentially future

president of the United States was convicted by a New York jury on 34 felony counts.

Next month, just days before he's due to be formally nominated as the Republican presidential

candidate for the

election in November, Donald Trump will be sentenced by a New York judge. Now, while a custodial sentence

will be just about unprecedented for this kind of crime, committed as it was by a first offender,

precedent really has very little meaning or relevance in this case, or indeed in these extraordinary political and judicial times.

We are indeed in unfamiliar territory. In fact, the terrain we're in politically is so new it makes the land Lewis and Clark found themselves in look like it was served by the regularly scheduled public transportation services.

Still, as intrepid

explorers here at the journal, it's our job to try to map out the path ahead. So what does happen

next? What will Trump's sentencing look like? Is it possible he could face a prison term or some other

punishment? Trump's lawyers have said he'll appeal the verdict, of course. How will that play out?

What in the conduct of the trial might constitute reversible

error for a state appeals court to overturn the verdict? And could it go all the way to the Supreme

Court? Could it indeed go to the Supreme Court first bypassing the New York process? And when,

on a what time scale will all this play out? Well, so many questions, I'm fortunate to have

...