Hello, I'm Ari Melper covering this first conviction of a former president in American history.

Thursday, May 30, 2024, is now etched in all of our collective experiences.

The day a jury found Donald Trump guilty. The day a man who

spent his life outrunning lawsuits from fellow citizens, civil cases from government officials,

regulatory probes, federal probes,

congressional inquiries, a record-breaking two impeachments in one presidential term,

a historic RICO charge, and an unprecedented two federal indictments, the defendant who outran

delayed or punted accountability on all of those cases over many years which

involved all kinds of evidence of wrongdoing, found he could not outrun a jury of his peers.

After two days and more than nine hours of deliberations, they unanimously found him guilty.

On all counts, as you know by now.

A former president convicted of felony crimes for the first time in our nation's history.

The news broke. We will be revisiting that tonight and going forward with some very special

guests and new information, but this is a time, if there ever were a time, to slow down

in our fast-paced lives in the way our media, including yes,

television and internet media, rushes forward to the next thing and the next

thing and the next iteration of the thing and the implication of the thing.

This is a time to absorb what we just went through.

It was not so long ago, May 30th, etched into legal precedent into law books that will be read and studied for many

decades to come, into history books that will try to understand why this took so long

in some sense and then why it happened and then

what will be happening after it which is our collective future and it will

...