President-elect Trump was spared any punishment for his hush money criminal conviction Friday when a New York judge sentenced him to an unconditional discharge, eschewing jail time while securing his status as the first felon to assume the presidency.
Judge Juan Merchan’s decision to release Trump with no strings attached caps the first and onlycriminal trial of a former president less than two weeks before he’s set to return to the White House.
New York jurors found him guilty of 34 felonies over a scheme intended to unlawfully sway the 2016 election by concealing a payment to a porn star to keep quiet about their alleged affair, which Trump has denied.
With the judge’s permission, Trump appeared virtually for the roughly 40-minute long sentencing on Friday.
Trump relentlessly sought to stave off his sentencing until after he takes office. It was originally set for July, but Trump convinced Merchan to delay it until after the election as the judge weighed whether the conviction could withstand the Supreme Court’s ruling carving out broad criminal immunity for former presidents’ official acts.
Upon becoming president-elect, Trump’s efforts to dismantle the case intensified, with new arguments that he should be immediately afforded the protections of a sitting president.
Even after Merchan signaled no punishment was the “most viable solution” given Trump’s immunity from criminal prosecution during his upcoming White House term, he appealed his effort to stop the case in its tracks all the way to the Supreme Court, which didn’t intervene.
The former president long employed a strategy of delay to defend against all four of his criminal prosecutions. He successfully bucked trials in the other three but failed to avoid facing a jury in the hush money case, which emerged as his first set of criminal charges in April 2023.
This spring, witnesses from Trump’s business and political spheres took the stand, often begrudgingly, during the seven-week trial. The jury of 12 New Yorkers found the former president guilty on all counts of falsifying business records, finding that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) had proven his unprecedented case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Trump’s sentencing now opens his ability to appeal his charges in normal course, which he has long vowed to do.
The president-elect had asked appeals courts to intervene many times ahead of, during and after his trial, but those efforts largely fell flat. Now, Trump is expected to appeal Bragg’s entire theory of the case in addition to his presidential immunity appeals that remain pending.
But even a successful appeal would take months, if not years, to progress through the courts. And with Trump set to take office in less than two weeks, legal experts broadly agree that criminal prosecutions cannot proceed against a sitting president.
Much of Trump’s criminal defense team is now moving into his administration.
Two of Trump’s hush money trial attorneys, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, were tapped for the second and third highest-ranking Justice Department roles.Anotherlawyer who has handled several of Trump’s appeals, D. John Sauer, is slated to become solicitor general, the agency’s fourth highest-ranking role.
