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NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump was found guilty Friday in a hush-money case, but a judge declined to impose any punishment. The result confirms his conviction but allows Trump to return to the White House unencumbered by the threat of prosecution. imprisonment or fine.
President Trump’s unconditional release ruling ends a norm-shattering case in which the former president and president-elect were charged with 34 felonies, tried for nearly two months and found guilty by a jury on all charges. Ta. But the legal detours and the grisly details of the plot to bury the extramarital affair were played out in court without hurting the voters who elected him to a second term.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Marchan could have sentenced the 78-year-old Republican to up to four years in prison. Instead, he chose a ruling that effectively ended the case and avoided a thorny constitutional issue, but affirmed that Trump would only become president if he was convicted of a felony.
President-elect Donald Trump attends his sentencing hearing before New York State Judge Juan Marchan in New York Criminal Court in Manhattan in a criminal case in which he was convicted in 2024 of paying hush money to a porn star. He appeared in court remotely. January 10, 2025 in New York. (Brendan McDiarmid, via AP, Poole)
Machan must consider aggravating factors before sentencing, as he does with other defendants, but the legal protections Trump receives as president “are a factor that trumps everything else.” said.
“Despite the breadth of these legal protections, one power they do not provide is not to erase a jury verdict,” Marchan said.
President Trump appeared virtually from his home in Florida and briefly addressed the court, calling his criminal trial and conviction “a very bad experience” and insisting he committed no crime.
The former Republican president appeared on a video feed 10 days before Inauguration Day to expose the case again, the only one of his four criminal indictments to have gone to trial and likely to continue. This is the only case where this is also done.
“This is a political witch hunt. This was done to tarnish my reputation and make sure I lost the election, and obviously it didn’t work,” Trump said.
Trump, wearing a dark suit, appeared on a video screen in the courtroom with one of his lawyers, calling the incident a “weaponization of government” and a “shame on New York.”
Attorney Emile Bove listens to virtual sentencing on Trump’s hush money conviction as attorney Todd Blanche and President-elect Donald Trump appear on a television screen in a Manhattan courtroom on Friday, January 10, 2025, in New York. (left). (Javin Botsford/Washington Post, via AP, Pool)
Judge Juan M. Marchan had already indicated he would impose a sentence without a fine, known as an unconditional discharge, but prosecutors did not object.
Prosecutors said Friday they supported a no-prison sentence, but denounced President Trump’s attacks on the justice system during and after the incident.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said that “former and future presidents of the United States waged a systematic campaign to undermine their legitimacy.”
Steinglass said that far from showing remorse, President Trump has “cultivated contempt” for jury verdicts and the criminal justice system, and that the president’s calls for retribution against those involved in the case, including calls for the removal of the judge, are “permanent.” It is causing significant damage.” It undermines the public’s perception of the criminal justice system and puts court personnel at risk. ”
The former president, who emerged from his home in Florida, was seated alongside attorney Todd Blanche, the second-highest appointee in the Justice Department in the incoming administration.
“Legally, this lawsuit should not have been filed,” Blanche said, reiterating President Trump’s intention to appeal the ruling.
Trump, a Republican, becomes the first president to hold office with a felony conviction.
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A few Trump supporters and critics gathered outside before the hearing. One group held a banner that read “Trump is guilty.” The other held signs that read “Stop the partisan conspiracy” and “Stop the political witch hunt.”
President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Republican governors at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, Thursday, January 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Judge Marchan had previously suggested that his plan for an unconditional release, which is unusual for a felony conviction, was in part to avoid the complex constitutional issues that would arise if the sentence overlapped with Trump’s term in office. .
The hush money lawsuit accused President Trump of falsifying his business records to hide a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. She was paid in the final stages of President Trump’s 2016 campaign not to tell the public about the sexual encounter she claims the two had had 10 years earlier. He says there was nothing sexual between them and claims that his political opponents filed false charges in an attempt to damage him.
“I have never falsified any business records. This is a trumped-up accusation,” the Republican president-elect wrote on his Truth Social platform last week. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who filed the charges, is a Democrat.
Demonstrators protest outside Manhattan Criminal Court before the start of sentencing in President-elect Donald Trump’s hush money case, Friday, January 10, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Mr. Bragg’s office said in a court filing Monday that Mr. Trump committed “serious crimes that caused significant damage to the sanctity of the electoral process and the integrity of New York’s financial markets.”
Although the specific charges involved checks and ledger books, the underlying charges were complex and deeply intertwined 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 keep voters from knowing about Trump’s alleged extramarital affair.
President Trump has denied that there was any alleged contact. His lawyers said he wanted to suppress the report to protect his family, not his campaign. And while prosecutors argued that Mr. Cohen’s reimbursement for the payment to Mr. Daniels was falsely recorded as legal expenses, Mr. Trump insisted it was simply that.
“There was no other way to call it,” he wrote on Truth Social last week, adding, “I wasn’t hiding anything.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to avoid a trial. Since he was found guilty in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records, they have almost every shot within their reach to overturn the conviction, dismiss the case, or at least postpone the sentencing. All legal means have been used.
Trump’s lawyers have been leaning heavily on the president’s defense of immunity from prosecution, which received a boost in July after the Supreme Court’s ruling granted sweeping immunity to the former commander-in-chief.
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When Daniels was paid in 2016, Trump was a private citizen and a presidential candidate. Trump was president when the redemption to Cohen was made and recorded the following year.
Trump’s defense lawyers, meanwhile, argued that immunity should prevent jurors from hearing some evidence, including testimony about some of his conversations with then-White House communications director Hope Hicks. he claimed.
And after Trump won the election this November, Trump’s lawyers needed to throw out the lawsuit to avoid impacting Trump’s inauguration and transition to the Oval Office. He claimed that there was.
Marchand, a Democrat, repeatedly postponed the sentencing, which was originally scheduled for July. But last week, he set a date for Friday, citing the need for a “final decision.” He wrote that he sought to balance President Trump’s need to govern, the Supreme Court’s immunity decision, due respect for jury verdicts, and the public’s expectation that “no one is above the law.”
FILE – Judge Juan M. Marchan poses for a portrait in his New York courtroom on March 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
Trump’s lawyers then launched a flurry of last-ditch efforts to block the ruling. Their last hope ended Thursday night with a 5-4 Supreme Court decision refusing to postpone the verdict.
Meanwhile, other criminal cases that once faced President Trump have either been concluded or stalled pending trial.
After Trump’s election, Special Counsel Jack Smith launched a federal probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents and efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. I ended it. The election interference case in Georgia has been thrown into obscurity after the firing of prosecutor Fani Willis.
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