It's been kind of hard to find some of this out, and harder for me because I don't care all that much, but here's what I think I know, and what I think about it:
Trump had sex with Stormy Daniels, covered that up by paying her to stay quiet, covered that up by funneling the money through his lawyer, and covered THAT up by falsifying business documents. That's what the prosecution alleged, what the jury believed, and what seems most plausible to me.
What I wanted to know, mainly, is why that last bit was even illegal. Was someone alleged to have been harmed? If so it should have been a lawsuit, and if not it shouldn't be illegal. Maybe that implies all of criminal law shouldn't exist, but that's another post.
Turns out it's a misdemeanor in NY state law, and if prosecuted as such the statute of limitations has long passed. BUT if that falsification is in service of some other crime, it can be a felony. That's what happened here, but what was that secondary crime? Prosecution offered several possibilities and told the jury it was up to them to decide.
I for one am flabbergasted that this is even legally possible, and I'm guessing this will be the basis of the inevitable appeal. Jurors couldn't, and weren't required to, agree on what this secondary crime was. Didn't have to convict him of it, just had to agree there probably was one.
This makes it seem pretty obvious to me that this was a political prosecution, but even if it's not, a lot of people are going to think so, and the "threat to our democracy" crowd are the very biggest fans of this conviction, which I also find ironic.
It doesn't stop him from running for or serving as president. There's almost no chance his sentence includes prison time. It changes exactly zero minds about him politically, but it has a good chance of energizing his base, just thinking of the ridiculous posts I've been seeing about how Jesus was also convicted in a sham trial, which makes the whole thing a tactical error to boot.
Of all the things recent presidents have done, it's also almost an insult that the first time in history a former president is convicted of a crime, is this level of bullshit and not war crimes, crimes against humanity, that sort of thing.