By Luc Cohen and Jack Queen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will not go to prison or face any other punishment over his criminal conviction stemming from money paid to a porn star, a judge ruled Friday, but said Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration would not do that. expunge the jury’s verdict.
Judge Juan Merchan’s sentencing of Trump, 78, to an unconditional discharge places a judgment of guilt on his record and closes a case that loomed over Trump’s bid to retake the White House.
Trump will be the first president to take office with a criminal conviction.
Merchan said he was imposing the sentence by sparing Trump from jail, a fine or probation because the U.S. Constitution protects presidents from criminal prosecution. But he said the protections afforded to the office “do not reduce the seriousness of a crime and in no way justify its commission.”
“The considerable, indeed extraordinary, legal protection afforded by the Office of the Chief Executive is one factor that trumps all others,” Merchan said. “Despite the extraordinary breadth of these protections, one power they do not provide is the power to expunge jury verdicts.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty and vowed to appeal the guilty verdict. Appearing with his lawyer on television screens broadcast into the courtroom with two American flags in the background, Trump called the case a failed attempt to thwart his re-election campaign.
“This has been a very terrible experience,” Trump said before the sentencing, wearing a red tie with white stripes.
“I am completely innocent, I have done nothing wrong,” he said.
Trump did not testify during the six-week trial last year, but repeatedly disparaged Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who prosecuted the case, in public statements.
Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor in Bragg’s office, said during the hearing that Trump engaged in a “coordinated campaign” to undermine the legitimacy of the case and “deliberately brought contempt to our judicial institutions.”
He said prosecutors supported the sentence of unconditional release.
“The verdict in this case was unanimous and decisive, and it must be respected,” Steinglass said.
Now that he has been convicted, Trump is free to pursue his appeal, a process that could take years and play out while he serves a four-year term as president.
“Now that it’s over, we will appeal this hoax,” Trump wrote in a social media post after Friday’s hearing.
Trump has fought tooth and nail to avoid the spectacle of being forced to appear before a state-level judge so close to when he is scheduled to take the oath of office. The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a last-minute attempt by Trump to stop it.
Merchan closed the half-hour hearing by saying, “Sir, I wish you well as you assume your second term.”
A payment of $130,000
The six-week trial took place last year against the extraordinary backdrop of Trump’s successful campaign to retake the White House.
Bragg, a Democrat, charged Trump, a Republican, in March 2023 with 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual relationship, she said. she had it with Trump, who denied it.
Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in that election.
On May 30, the Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts. Prosecutors argued that despite the sordid nature of the allegations, the case involved an attempt to corrupt the 2016 election.
Critics of the businessman-turned-politician cited the charges and other legal troubles he faced to support their claim that he was unfit to hold public office.
Trump flipped the script. He argued that this case – along with three other criminal indictments and civil suits accusing him of fraud, defamation and sexual abuse – was an attempt by opponents to weaponize the justice system against him and harm his re-election campaign. He frequently lashed out at prosecutors and witnesses, and Merchan ultimately fined Trump $10,000 for violating a silence order.
As recently as January 3, Trump called the judge a “radical partisan” in a post on his Truth Social platform.
A MIXED POLITICAL BAG
The silence case was widely seen as less serious than the three other criminal cases Trump faced, in which he was accused of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and keeping classified documents after left the White House. Trump has pleaded not guilty in all cases.
But Bragg’s case was the only one to go to trial despite numerous challenges from Trump’s lawyers. After Trump’s Nov. 5 election victory, federal prosecutors dropped both of their cases because of Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
The remaining case, brought in Georgia as part of efforts to overturn that state’s 2020 election results, is in limbo after a court in December disqualified the lead prosecutor handling the case.
The financial secrecy affair was politically mixed. Trump’s campaign contributions increased after his indictment in March 2023, likely helping him defeat his rivals for the Republican nomination. During the trial, polls showed that a majority of voters took the charges seriously, and his standing among Republicans fell after the guilty verdict.
But the matter quickly faded from the headlines, particularly after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance led him to drop out, Vice President Kamala Harris replacing him on the Democratic ticket, and after the ball of a gunman nearly killing Trump at a rally in Butler. Pennsylvania.
Merchan had originally scheduled sentencing for July 11, but repeatedly pushed it back at Trump’s request. In agreeing in September to delay sentencing until after the election, the judge wrote that he feared being seen as putting his thumb on the scale.
Falsifying commercial documents is punishable by up to four years in prison. Although it was unlikely that Trump would be sentenced to prison due to his advanced age and lack of criminal history, legal experts said it was not impossible, especially given his violations of the order of silence.
Trump’s victory and impending inauguration have made a prison sentence or probation even less practical.
