Furious Trump told Speaker Johnson ‘we have to overturn this’ in F-bomb tirade after conviction

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Politico’s Playbook newsletter recounts that the GOP presidential contender was overheard “dropping frequent F-bombs” in his call with Johnson on May 30 as he told the speaker: “We have to overturn this.” Trump was fuming after a jury of 12 Manhattanites found him guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in order to conceal a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to prevent her allegation of an extramarital affair in summer 2006 getting out and damaging his chances of winning the 2016 presidential election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. The day after the verdict was read out, the speaker was up early and appearing on Fox News’s Fox and Friends breakfast show insisting that the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court should “step in” to prevent Trump’s plight from undermining the American public’s faith in its justice system. Mike Johnson and Donald Trump speak to the press at Mar-a-Lago in Florida on 12 April 2024 “This is diminishing the American people’s faith in our system of justice itself and, to maintain a republic, you have to have that, people have to believe that justice is fair, that there’s equal justice under law. “So I think they’ll set this straight, but it’s going to take a while.” According to Politico, Johnson has since “been in talks with Judiciary committee chair and Trump ally Jim Jordan about using the appropriations process to target special counsel Jack Smith’s probe”, referring to the Justice Department attorney’s Trump indictments related to the illegal retention of classified documents and the former president’s role in the Capitol riot of January 6 2021.