HOW THE LOSER WON

SMILING DIDN'T FEEL QUITE RIGHT. MICHAEL COHEN WONDERED: WAS IT SAFE TO SMILE NOW?

- OLIVIA NUZZI and ANDREW RICE

MICHAEL COHEN WAS at home on the afternoon of Thursday, May 30, in his tenth-floor apartment at Trump Park Avenue, a building still managed by the family company belonging to the man he once called "the Boss." He was sitting on the floor in the living room, his back against the couch, watching MSNBC with his wife and daughter. He held his breath as he waited to hear the verdict. His face was frozen. Eyes wide. Mouth open. Host Ari Melber delivered the news: "Count one...Guilty." Cohen let out a wild sound, as if half-man and half-rescue animal, a hoot and a growl and a howl all at once. "WwwwwOOOfugh!" His expression turned awestruck. Melber continued, "Count two...Guilty." Again: "WwwwwOOOfugh!" His heart was beating hard now, so hard that you could almost see it through his shirt. "Count three ... Guilty." "WwwwwOOOfugh!" His wife and daughter laughed, cried, and applauded. "Count four...Guilty." "WwwwwOOOfugh!" "Count five...Guilty." "WwwwwO00fugh!" He balled his hands into fists, punched the air, and cried out, "Yes!"

Inside a stuffy courtroom in lower Manhattan, Donald Trump was having a more contained reaction to the news. He looked downcast as he absorbed the 34 lashes of the verdict. The judge, New York State justice Juan Merchan, then briskly went through the formalities of conviction: polling the members of the jury to check if they were truly unanimous, scheduling a sentencing hearing for July 11, and ordering up a report on Trump from the Probation Department. He released the convict-the certain Republican nominee for president-back into the free world on his own recognizance.

Four miles north, a few blocks from Trump Tower, a smile flickered across Cohen's face. He had been there-crushed beneath the heel of the system. It seemed only just that Trump should now feel its weight too.