Merchan imposes no fine in hush money case – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

At a unique moment in American history, President-elect Donald Trump He was sentenced Friday for hush money in New York, but the judge declined to impose any punishment.

The result cements Trump’s conviction before he returns to power while freeing him to return to the White House without the threat of jail time or a fine.

Trump’s sentence of unconditional release caps a norm-breaking case that saw the former and future president accused of 34 serious crimesput on trial for almost two months and convicted by a jury on all charges. However, the legal detour (and the sordid details aired in court about a plot to bury accusations of infidelity) did not harm him with voters, who elected him to a second term.

Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchán could have sentenced the 78-year-old Republican to up to four years in prison. Instead, he chose a ruling that sidestepped thorny constitutional issues by effectively ending the case but ensured that Trump will become the first person convicted of a felony to assume the presidency.

NBC News has a special report on Trump’s sentencing.

Merchan said that as with any other defendant, he must consider any aggravating factors before imposing a sentence, but the legal protection Trump will have as president “is a factor that prevails over all others.”

“Despite the extraordinary breadth of those legal protections, one power they do not provide is not to erase the jury’s verdict,” Merchan said.

Trump, briefly addressing the court while appearing virtually from his home in Florida, said his criminal trial and conviction had “been a very terrible experience” and insisted he committed no crime.

The former Republican president, who appeared in a video 10 days before his inauguration, once again ridiculed the case, the only one of his four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that will do so.

“It has been a political witch hunt. “It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election and obviously that didn’t work,” Trump said.

Trump called the case “a government weapon” and “an embarrassment to New York.”

10 days after Trump’s inauguration, Judge Juan M. Merchán has He indicated that he plans a sentence without penalty It is called unconditional release and prosecutors do not object to it. That would mean no jail time, probation or fines would be imposed, but nothing will be final until Friday’s proceedings are completed.

Prosecutors said Friday they supported a no-sentence sentence but criticized Trump’s attacks on the legal system during and after the case.

“The former and future president of the United States has waged a coordinated campaign to undermine his legitimacy,” said prosecutor Joshua Steinglass.

Instead of showing remorse, Trump has “generated disdain” for the jury verdict and the criminal justice system, Steinglass said, and his calls for retaliation against those involved in the case, including calling for the judge to be disbarred, “has caused lasting damage.” to the public perception of the criminal justice system and has put court officials in danger.”

When he appeared from his home in Florida, the former president was sitting with his lawyer Todd Blanche, whom he has tapped to serve as the Justice Department’s second-highest ranking official in his incoming administration.

“Legally, this case should not have been brought,” Blanche said, reiterating Trump’s intention to appeal the verdict. That technically can’t happen until he is sentenced.

Regardless of the outcome, Trump, a Republican, will become the first person convicted of a felony to become president.

The judge has indicated he plans unconditional release — a rarity in felony convictions — in part to avoid complicated constitutional questions that would arise if he imposed a sentence that overlapped with Trump’s presidency.

Before the hearing, a handful of Trump supporters and critics gathered outside. One group held a banner that read, “Trump is guilty.” The other held one that said: “Stop the partisan conspiracy” and “Stop the political witch hunt.”

The case of silent money accused Trump of manipulating his company records to hide a payment of $130,000 to porn actor Stormy Daniels. He was paid, at the end of Trump’s 2016 campaign, not to tell the public about a sexual encounter. she keeps the two had done it a decade earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them and maintains that his political opponents engineered a false prosecution to try to harm him.

“I never falsified business records. “It is a false and invented accusation,” the Republican president-elect wrote last week on his Truth Social platform. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the charges, is a Democrat.

Bragg’s office said in a court filing Monday that Trump committed “serious crimes that caused great harm to the sanctity of the electoral process and the integrity of the New York financial market.”

While the specific charges concerned checks and ledgers, the underlying allegations were sordid and deeply entangled with Trump’s political rise. Prosecutors said Daniels was paid… via Trump’s personal lawyer at that time, Michael Cohen, as part of a broader effort to prevent voters from finding out about Trump’s alleged extramarital escapades.

Trump denies that the alleged meetings occurred. His lawyers said he wanted to silence the stories to protect his family, not his campaign. And although prosecutors said Cohen’s reimbursements for paying Daniels were misleadingly recorded as legal expenses, Trump says that’s simply what they were.

“It couldn’t have been called anything else,” he wrote in Truth Social last week, adding: “It wasn’t hiding anything.”

Trump’s lawyers tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent the trial. Since his conviction in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records, they have used virtually every legal lever at their disposal to try to overturn the conviction, dismiss the case or at least postpone sentencing.

Trump’s lawyers have leaned heavily on claims of presidential immunity from prosecution, and in July they received a boost from a decision of the Supreme Court which grants former commanders in chief considerable immunity.

Trump was a private citizen and presidential candidate when Daniels was paid in 2016. He was president when the repayments to Cohen were made and recorded the following year.

On the one hand, Trump’s defense argued that immunity should have prevented jurors from hearing some evidenceas testimony about some of his conversations with then-White House communications director Hope Hicks.

And after Trump won the elections last NovemberHis lawyers argued that the case should be dismissed to avoid affecting his next presidency and his transition to the Oval Office.

Merchan, a Democrat, repeatedly postponed sentencing, initially scheduled for July. But last week, he set the date for fridayciting the need for “purpose.” He wrote that he struggled to balance Trump’s need to govern, the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, the respect due to the jury’s verdict and the public’s expectation that “no one is above the law.”

Trump’s lawyers then launched a series of last-minute efforts to block the sentencing. His last hope was dashed Thursday night with a 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court that refused to delay sentencing.

Meanwhile, the other criminal cases that once loomed over Trump have ended or stalled before trial.

After Trump’s election, special counsel Jack Smith federal processes closed about Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. at the state level Georgia election interference case is locked in uncertainty after fiscal fani Willis was eliminated of it.