Donald Trump sentenced in hush money case

NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced Friday in his hush money case, but the judge declined to impose any punishment, a result that cements his conviction and frees him to return to the White House unencumbered. of the threat of a prison sentence or a fine.

The punishment-free sentencing marks a peaceful end to an extraordinary case that for the first time brought a former president and a major presidential candidate to court as a criminal defendant. The case was the only one of four criminal indictments that went to trial and possibly the only one that will.

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.

Unlike his trial last year, when Trump brought his allies to the courthouse and addressed reporters waiting outside the courthouse, the former president did not appear in person on Friday, instead making a brief virtual appearance from his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

Donald Trump insists he committed no crime

Trump, dressed in a dark suit and sitting next to one of his lawyers with an American flag in the background, appeared on a video screen as he again insisted that he committed no crime.

“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.”

Trump’s sentence of unconditional release caps a momentous case in which the former and future president was charged with 34 felonies, tried for nearly two months and convicted by a jury on all counts. 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.

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 by video, said his criminal trial and conviction had “been a very terrible experience” and insisted he committed no crime.

Before Friday’s hearing, Merchan had indicated He planned the non-penalty sentence, called unconditional release, which meant that no jail time, probation or fines would be imposed.

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 Mar-a-Lago home, the former president was sitting with his lawyer Todd Blanche, whom he has tapped to fill the second-highest position at the Justice Department in his incoming administration.

“American voters had the opportunity to see and decide for themselves whether this was the type of case that should have been brought. And they decided,” Blanche said. “And that is why in 10 days President Trump will be sworn in as president of the United States.”

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 altering his business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels. She was paid, at the end of Trump’s 2016 campaign, not to tell the public about a sexual encounter she claims the two had 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, through Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, as part of a broader effort to prevent voters from learning 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 got a boost from a Supreme Court decision granting 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.

Merchan, a Democrat, repeatedly postponed sentencing, initially scheduled for July. But last week he set the date for Friday, citing the need for “finality.” 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 closed federal prosecutions over Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. A statewide election interference case in Georgia is mired in uncertainty after prosecutor Fani Willis was fired.

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