Donald Trump has publicly thanked Boris Johnson after the former prime minister denounced his conviction as a “mob-style hit job”.
The disgraced former US president was found guilty last week of falsifying business records to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, and now faces the possibility of a four-year jail sentence.
Mr Johnson, 59, who enjoyed a warm relationship with Trump, 77, while they were both in office, described the ruling as “nakedly political” and it would only make his re-election more likely.
“This was no ordinary political assassination. This was a machine gun mob-style hit job on Trump,” Mr Johnson wrote in his column for the Daily Mail the morning after the conviction.
Trump was found guilty by a New York jury on 34 charges of falsifying documents to cover up the alleged affair.
In the early hours of Monday morning, Trump wrote “Thank you to Boris Johnson” and posted excerpts of Mr Johnson’s column on the social media platform Truth Social.
Mr Johnson is the most high-profile British politician to back Trump so far, putting pressure on Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer over the “special relationship” between the US and UK.
Mr Sunak and Sir Keir had sought to avoid expressing an opinion on the case while on the campaign trail on Friday.
Whoever is prime minister following the general election will have to work with Trump if he triumphs in the US election in November.
Trump’s conviction does not disqualify him from seeking the White House or occupying it should he beat incumbent Joe Biden, 81, in November’s presidential race.
Trump had blamed Mr Biden and the “devil” judge overseeing his hush money trial for his conviction in a rambling speech delivered from Trump Tower, the site of his 2016 presidential campaign launch.
Trump faces a maximum penalty of four years imprisonment when he is sentenced on July 11, but experts agree that a custodial sentence for the former, and possibly future, president is unlikely.
On Sunday, Trump said he is “OK” with being jailed but warned that his followers may reach “breaking point” if he is incarcerated.
Legal experts have argued he is more likely to be given a sentence of home confinement or probation, but others claim his campaign of attacks against Judge Juan Merchan, who will decide his sentence, could backfire.
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