Kremlin says Trump verdict shows his rivals are using all means to get rid of him

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Friday that Donald Trump's guilty verdict showed that all legal and illegal means were being used in the United States to get rid of political rivals.

Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime on Thursday when a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.

"If we speak about Trump, the fact that there is simply the elimination, in effect, of political rivals by all possible means, legal and illegal, is obvious", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a news briefing.

Trump, 77, will be sentenced on July 11.

U.S. President Joe Biden's campaign said that the verdict proves that "no one is above the law", but will do little to change the dynamics of the Nov. 5 election.

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Andrew Osborn)