New Delhi: Donald Trump will be the first felon to occupy the White House, after being criminally sentenced Friday by Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the hush money case. Merchan declined to impose any punishment on the US President-elect.
The sentence comes months after he was convicted on 34 counts by a jury in the state of New York.
Judge Merchan sentenced Trump to an unconditional discharge, a sentence available in the New York court system, which while lenient still ensures the President-elect’s status as a felon, a mere 10 days before his inauguration.
The President-elect has avoided jail or any substantive punishment, with the sentencing largely symbolic. Trump is also the first former president to be criminally convicted by a court in the US. The case revolves around the charge that Trump falsified business records at his private company in 2016 to cover up payments of $130,000 to former adult performer Stormy Daniels, in order to silence her claims that could have potentially influenced the elections that year.
Trump was convicted 34 times of falsifying records of sending cheques to his lawyer as reimbursements for paying off the adult performer who claimed to have a sexual relationship with the President-elect years earlier. A jury convicted him last May.
“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,” railed the President-elect in a post on his social media platform Truth Social after the sentence was announced.
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,…
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) January 10, 2025
Trump added: “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.”
He called the case “despicable” and has promised to “appeal this hoax” to restore the American’s trust in the justice system. He appeared in the courtroom virtually from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, along with his lawyer Todd Blanche.
The case is the only one of four criminal indictments against the next US President that went to trial, and given that he is assuming the presidency in 10 days, will likely be the only case to ever do so.
Trump was potentially facing up to four years in prison.
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What is an unconditional discharge?
Judge Merchan is reported to have made it clear in the courtroom that when imposing a sentence on the defendant, he must consider aggravating circumstances before doing so, adding that the legal protections Trump has due to his office as President of the US, is a factor that overrides all else.
“Despite the extraordinary breadth of those legal protections, one power they do not provide is that they do not erase a jury verdict,” said Judge Merchan during the sentencing, according to the Associated Press.
An unconditional discharge means Trump faces no penalty, no jail time, no probation and no fines would be imposed. It was an expected sentence, with Judge Merchan indicating that he could impose an unconditional discharge last week in an 18-page decision, which scheduled the final sentencing for 10 January, 2025.
A conditional discharge, for example, would have required Trump to maintain certain conditions, like maintaining employment or paying restitution.
According to The New York Times, in the last decade, a third of all defendants sentenced to the charges of falsifying business records in the first degree in Manhattan, received jail time of about less than a year.
Some of the defendants received longer sentences or conditional discharges. However, none barring Trump received an unconditional discharge, reported the American newspaper.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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Water off a duck’s back. He also laughed off two impeachments.