United States President-elect Donald Trump, on Friday, was sentenced to an ‘unconditional discharge’ following his conviction over hush-money payments made to an adult porn actress.
Just days before he officially returns to the White House, Trump is now the first former US president ever sentenced for a crime.
The verdict will mean no jail time, no probation and no fines for Trump, but places a judgement of guilt on his permanent record.
Judge Juan Merchan delivered the decision on Friday, a day after the US Supreme Court rejected an attempt by Trump’s legal team to delay sentencing before the Republican leader’s inauguration on January 20.
Trump appeared virtually from Florida and sat silently without responding to a greeting from Merchan.
Lawyers flanked the incoming POTUS on TV screens beamed to the courtroom with two American flags in the background. He was also seen wearing a red tie with white stripes.
Trump called his conviction a ‘political witch-hunt’ and a ‘disgrace to the system’ as he appeared via video. He also claimed that the case had been pursued to ‘damage his reputation’ and make him lose the US Presidential election.
“This has been a very terrible experience. I think it’s been a tremendous setback for New York, the New York court system. This is a case that Alvin Bragg did not want to bring…from what I read and what I hear, inappropriately handled before he got there. I called a legal fee a legal expense and for this, I got indicted. It’s incredible, actually,” he said.
Prosecutors in the New York case had argued that the hush-money payments aimed to conceal allegations of a sexual relationship with Daniels that could have been politically damaging.
Trump, who had pleaded not guilty, denied any such relationship took place.
Shortly after the court ruling, Trump took to Truth Social to express that, “The Radical Democrats have lost another pathetic, unAmerican Witch Hunt. After spending tens of millions of dollars, wasting over 6 years of obsessive work that should have been spent on protecting New Yorkers from violent, rampant crime that is destroying the City and State, coordinating with the Biden/Harris Department of Injustice in lawless Weaponization, and bringing completely baseless, illegal, and fake charges against your 45th and 47th President, ME, I was given an UNCONDITIONAL DISCHARGE.
“That result alone proves that, as all Legal Scholars and Experts have said, THERE IS NO CASE, THERE WAS NEVER A CASE, and this whole Scam fully deserves to be DISMISSED. The real Jury, the American People, have spoken, by Re-Electing me with an overwhelming MANDATE in one of the most consequential Elections in History.
“As the American People have seen, this “case” had no crime, no damages, no proof, no facts, no Law, only a highly conflicted Judge, a star witness who is a disbarred, disgraced, serial perjurer, and criminal Election Interference. Today’s event was a despicable charade, and now that it is over, we will appeal this Hoax, which has no merit, and restore the trust of Americans in our once great System of Justice. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
His lawyers had asked the Supreme Court for a stay of the sentencing “to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government”.
They argued that a ruling last year by the top court that grants presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution means that some of the evidence should not have been presented in the case.
But a majority of the justices on the Supreme Court said in a decision late on Thursday that the “alleged evidentiary violations” at Trump’s state-court trial “can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal”.
They also said “the burden that sentencing will impose” on Trump’s responsibilities “is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court’s stated intent to impose a sentence of ‘unconditional discharge’ after a brief virtual hearing”.
Under New York’s penal code, a court can sentence a defendant to unconditional discharge if it “is of the opinion that no proper purpose would be served by imposing any condition upon the defendant’s release.”
LEADERSHIP recalls that Trump was convicted in May 2024 on 34 counts of falsifying business records. The jury found that he falsified records kept by his company to hide the purpose of reimbursements to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen, who had made a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 campaign to silence her claim of an extramarital sexual encounter.
