ANDREW NEIL: Just when the West has never been in greater need of American leadership... that sound you can hear from Moscow and Beijing is the clinking of glasses as the U.S. tears itself apart in the most bitter election in memory

The 2024 race to be President of the United States has just caught fire. Thursday's conviction of Donald Trump on 34 criminal counts in a hush-money trial held in a Manhattan court has only further divided an already deeply polarised country.

President Biden and Trump have long had a visceral loathing of each other. The guilty verdicts will only exacerbate their mutual hate. This will be the most bitterly fought presidential contest in modern American history.

But it is more than an American story. It has serious implications for the rest of the world too, especially the remaining embattled democracies, most of whom — including Britain — still depend on the U.S. for their ultimate security.

At a time when autocrats are on the march, when democracy is in more danger than at any time since the end of the Cold War — perhaps since the rise of fascism and communism in the 1930s — and when the democratic world is bereft of the leadership it needs to survive, U.S. politicians will be knocking lumps out of each other in a manner so brutal that reconciliation will probably prove impossible in the aftermath of the voting.

Just when the Western world has never been more in need of U.S. leadership, it is unlikely to be forthcoming, no matter who wins the presidential poll on November 5. These are dangerous times for us all.

Thursday's conviction of Donald Trump on 34 criminal counts in a hush-money trial held in a Manhattan court has only further divided an already deeply polarised country

My guess is that the Trump campaign will be fired up far more than the Joe Biden campaign, which has trouble finding its mojo and proceeds at the snail's pace of its leading man, writes Andrew Neil

But they are good times to be President Xi of China and President Putin of Russia, the world's two most powerful and dangerous tyrants.

As they seek to expand their influence and control, by fair means and foul, by diplomatic pressure and military threat, America — the only protagonist with the power to stand up to either of them — will be embroiled in a bitter election that offers its voters a choice between an unpredictable, narcissistic convicted criminal and an incompetent, doddery 81-year-old who is visibly declining.

That noise you can hear emanating from the Kremlin in Moscow and the West Wing of the Zhongnanhai in Beijing is the sound of laughter and the clinking of glasses. I'm pretty sure there will be chuckles in Tehran and Pyongyang too, indeed, anywhere the enemies of democracy gather and plot against us.

The controversial manner of Trump's conviction — hardly American justice's finest hour — hasn't just soured an already bitter U.S. polity. It has emboldened the despots, who increasingly find it hard to take America seriously.

Just imagine the incredulity of Putin, who has used his power to enrich himself (and his cronies) beyond even the dreams of The Donald, as he observed a New York justice system seek to bang up a former president and current presidential candidate for the falsification of business expenses — a crime, yes, but a very minor one.

Consider the amazement of Xi at the ability of the governing party of the world's greatest democracy, where the rule of law and blind justice are meant to be its hallmarks, to drag an opponent through the courts because it fears it might not be able to defeat him at the ballot box.

Isn't that the sort of undermining of freedom, Xi could be forgiven for asking, that is only meant to happen in dictatorships like mine?

Kremlin mischief-makers are already at work: it is 'obvious', says its chief spokesman, that what is going on is 'a de facto elimination of political rivals by all possible legal and illegal means'. In other words, for all America's fine words about freedom and democracy, you're just as bad as we are.

Of course, Democrats argue the Trump trial shows the opposite: that nobody is above the law, not even a former president who is running again for the presidency.

There is some validity in that perspective. But it is equally possible to argue, perhaps with even more validity, that Trump has been treated unequally because nobody else in similar circumstances would have faced the charges he did.

President Putin of Russia and President Xi of China seek to expand their influence and control, by fair means and foul, by diplomatic pressure and military threat

The case is complicated, with six weeks of testimony and 22 witnesses. The jury was then subject to granular guidance from the judge which, when printed out, took up 55 pages. That the jurors were nevertheless able to reach a remarkably quick verdict merely confirms, for Trump supporters, that their man never stood a chance.

Perhaps. Amid the welter of claim and counter-claim, the picture is confusing. So let's try to clarify it.

The case centered on $130,000 in hush money paid through Trump's then legal fixer and all-round dodgy character, Michael Cohen, to a porn star called Stormy Daniels, who was threatening to go public on the eve of the 2016 presidential election with her claim of a one-night stand with Trump back in 2006. 

Trump has always denied the assignation, somewhat implausibly. But paying hush money is not illegal. Unsavoury, unseemly, underhand? Yes. But not illegal.

Doctoring the company books to disguise the repayment of Cohen, who had to be reimbursed his outlay of $130,000, is illegal but under New York law is only a misdemeanour, a minor crime. The statute of limitations covering this had already expired.

To reignite it and accuse Trump of a serious crime, the prosecutors had to argue the books had been distorted in pursuit of a more serious underlying crime. What was that? The prosecutors offered a choice of campaign law violations and tax crime.

Even the liberal-left New York Times described this yesterday as an 'unusual legal theory'. The anti-Trump Economist magazine says in its latest edition that it was 'too much of a stretch to command widespread public legitimacy'. The pro-Biden Washington Post deemed it 'not the most legally compelling of cases'.

One of the most remarkable features of the trial was that not once during the examination of 22 witnesses did the prosecution ever refer to what the 'underlying crime' was. It was only when it came to the long-winded closing remarks (which took five hours) that the lead prosecutor suggested what the felony — or serious crime — might be.

It turns out the prosecution case rested on the claim that hush-money was part of a criminal conspiracy to distort the outcome of the 2016 election. But no witnesses were called to testify along these lines. When Trump's defence asked to call New York State's leading expert on campaign finance law, Judge Juan Merchan refused.

Even worse, the judge instructed the jury that, though they had to be unanimous in deciding underlying crimes were involved, they did not have to agree what these crimes were.

Trump at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York. The case against him centred on $130,000 in hush money paid through Trump's then legal fixer Michael Cohen to porn star Stormy Daniels

Some could think it was state campaign law violations, others federal election law offences, still others unspecified tax crimes — a kind of pick and mix approach to justice. It would be fine if the jury disagreed about what the crime was, just so long as they agreed that there was a crime.

Thus did the judge seem to overrule a cardinal common law principal — that juries must be unanimous to get a conviction.

All this and more will be grist for an appeal, which Trump's lawyers have 30 days to lodge. Any appeal, however, will not be heard before November 5. Indeed the full process could take several years. No appeal can help Trump this side of election day. He will have to fight for the presidency as a convicted felon.

Those close to Trump tell me he's buoyant but now in full martyrdom mode. At a press conference yesterday, he claimed to be the victim of a 'fascist state'. A pro-Trump columnist has designated his trial as America's first 'Stalinist show trial'.

He wasn't surprised by the guilty verdict because he always felt the cards were stacked against him: a Democratic judge (and Biden donor, whose daughter is a progressive Democratic activist) who nearly always sided with the prosecution; a Left-wing Democratic prosecutor (Alvin Bragg) who was elected on a 'Get Trump' platform; and a jury drawn from a solidly Democratic city, most of whom said their primary source of news was from anti-Trump mainstream media.

Republicans are especially animated that Bragg has shown little enthusiasm for doing anything about New York's violent crime wave, but has been determined to convict Trump for wrongful book-keeping entries.

These Trump lines will be parroted on a regular basis for weeks to come. Sentencing will take place on July 11 and is entirely a matter for the judge. Most legal eagles say probation is the most likely penalty for a 77-year-old guilty of a low-level white collar crime with no previous convictions. But Trump thinks the judge is so 'hysterical' he might decide to jail him.

Even so, Trump is unlikely to end up behind bars while the appeal process takes its leisurely course. The Republican convention starts on July 15 in Milwaukee, when Trump will be crowned his party's undisputed champion for the 2024 presidential election.

Thus will America be confronted with a choice between a convicted felon and an ageing — and clearly ailing — incumbent who should be heading for retirement rather than aiming for four more years in the toughest job in the world.

The Democrats hoped to tie up Trump in legal knots to derail his candidacy. They've always known Biden was not the candidate to beat Trump at the ballot box, but didn't know how to dump him. So other means had to be devised to thwart the brash New Yorker. Early signs are that it is backfiring terribly.

The guilty verdict has triggered a flood of fresh donations to the Trump campaign, so much so that its website went down on Thursday night. A new poll for National Public Radio found that most Americans are shrugging off a Trump conviction and that it would generally not affect voting.

A Daily Mail poll that Trump referred to several times yesterday reported that, since he was convicted, 22 per cent now had a more favourable view of him versus 16 percent who said they now viewed him more negatively.

My guess is that the Trump campaign will be fired up far more than the Biden campaign, which has trouble finding its mojo and proceeds at the snail's pace of its leading man.

But what matters is how this all goes down among moderate and independent voters, especially in the swing states. In a very real sense the 2024 election is going to be determined in the sprawling outer suburbs of places like Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Detroit. For now at least I'd say they were going Trump's way, such is the growing disillusion with the U.S. legal system.

But there is no good news in any of this. Suppose Trump loses in November but his conviction is overturned afterwards on appeal. That would rip America apart.

Or suppose Trump wins despite Democratic lawfare. Chances are he will go on the rampage seeking revenge. That too would rip America apart.

Perhaps U.S. justice is the biggest loser of all in what is, in many respects, a legal farce. Its courts and judges have always been somewhat politicised (some judges are even elected) but, in a deeply divided country, this aspect of the system has become more marked than ever.

It's reached a point at which the politics of the prosecutors, judge and jury are becoming the key determinants in whether a case is brought and what the verdict is.

This is not how justice is meant to operate in a democratic society in which justice and politics should stay separate.

The U.S. Constitution, which is the very embodiment of the principle of the separation of powers, no longer operates as it should. U.S. courts increasingly resemble what you'd expect in a banana republic, not the impartial and independent courts of a mature democracy.

It is a measure of the low point America has reached that the outcome of its upcoming presidential contest could now be determined by how voters feel about the paying of hush money to a porn star.

This is not exactly the republic the Founding Fathers envisaged all those years ago.