Donald Trump won't be sentenced to jail time for New York felonies

Trump indicated the day after his conviction he would appeal, but in New York that option becomes available only after sentencing. Credit: AP

Donald Trump, the once and future President of the United States, will not spend a minute behind bars for his 34 felony convictions resulting from last year’s “hush money,” business fraud and election interference trial, the presiding judge announced Friday.

In an 18-page decision and order, New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan ended the mystery of whether Trump might ever face the prospect of incarceration, even after he completes a second term in the White House; he won’t.

In scheduling a sentencing hearing for Friday, January 10, Merchan wrote: “It seems proper at this juncture to make known the Court's inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration, a sentence authorized by the conviction.”Instead, Merchan revealed, he plans to impose a sentence of “unconditional discharge,” which will allow Trump to remain free without restrictions.

Closing the case this way, the judge wrote, “appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality and allow Defendant to pursue his appellate options".

Trump indicated the day after his conviction he would appeal, but in New York that option becomes available only after sentencing.

Though Trump was required to attend every day of the trial and jury selection in person, Merchan is granting him the opportunity to appear remotely for the sentencing hearing.

The New York case was the only one of four criminal indictments brought against Trump since he left the White House in 2021 that made it to trial.

Since Trump won re-election in November, his attorneys have pressed Merchan to set aside the unanimous jury verdict and dismiss the indictment. But the judge declined to do so, writing on Friday: “Such decision would undermine the Rule of Law in immeasurable ways.”

Merchan called “the sanctity of a jury verdict…a bedrock principle of our Nation’s jurisprudence".

The sentencing hearing, originally scheduled before the Republican National Convention last July, has been postponed three times, most significantly, following last July’s US Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted while in office.

In his decision on Friday, Merchan asserted: “No official acts evidence was admitted” during the seven-week trial in Manhattan last April and May. The jury heard from 22 witnesses and saw 500 exhibits of evidence.

"All of which supported the jury’s verdict,” Merchan wrote.

It is unknown what swayed the jury as none of the 12 jurors, whose identities were kept anonymous by the court, have spoken publicly about their two days of deliberations.

Merchan characterised Trump’s request to dismiss the case now as “akin to a ‘retroactive’ form of Presidential immunity, thus giving a defendant the ability to nullify verdicts lawfully rendered prior to a defendant being elected president by virtue of being elected president.”

Merchan also rejected Trump’s request to consider his character as a reason to vacate the verdict, citing the former president’s extensive public comments expressing “disdain” for judicial branches of government and his “lack of respect for judges, juries, grand juries, and the justice system as a whole.”

Last month, in a letter to Merchan, Trump’s attorneys raised the spectre of juror misconduct but have not provided the court any information to support that claim, the judge said.

The crimes for which Trump was found guilty last May 30 were committed in 2017, when Trump was in his first year serving as the 45th President of the United States.

Between February and December, in his familiar black Sharpie signature, Trump signed 11 cheques paying his former attorney, Michael Cohen, $35,000 a month, falsely disguised as a legal retainer, trial evidence showed. (The first cheque combined the January and February payments).

Stormy Daniels claimed to have had an affair with Donald Trump a decade before his successful White House bid. Credit: AP

The sum, totalling $420,000, actually rewarded and reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 he had paid pornographic movie star Stormy Daniels towards the end of the 2016 presidential campaign to keep quiet about a tryst with Trump she says occurred at a Nevada golf resort where they met in 2006.

The 34 counts of falsifying business records stemmed from the 11 cheques Trump signed, 11 fake invoices solicited from Cohen and processed by the Trump Organization, and 12 monthly financial ledger entries falsely describing the payments as regular legal fees. (The first invoice also combined the January and February amounts).

Daniels testified explicitly about the sexual encounter. Trump did not testify in his own defence but denies the sexual liaison. Daniels signed a non-disclosure agreement negotiated by her lawyer, who testified, in October 2016, but her story became public in early 2018.

Trump’s legal team argued trial testimony by former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks – she discussed the Daniels matter with Trump at the White House – and former White House executive assistant Madeleine Westerhout – she routinely saw Trump sign cheques and documents in the Oval Office – violated the Supreme Court immunity parameters.


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But in a 41-page December decision and order, Merchan found the high court’s immunity guidance pertained to “core constitutional powers” such as conducting foreign policy, commanding armed forces, making appointments, and granting pardons, while the criminal charges against Trump stemmed from “private acts".

“Defendant’s argument that any communication he had with Ms Hicks is subject to absolute immunity is mistaken,” Merchan wrote last month. As for Westerhout, the judge found: “Her testimony reflected unofficial conduct in its entirety.”

In prosecuting only the hush money case against Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to pursue more broad financial fraud accusations investigated by his predecessor.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James picked up the brunt of that case in bringing a civil suit that accused Trump and his children of falsely inflating the value of their assets for years to obtain more favorable loan terms and insurance premiums for their real estate projects. A New York judge last February ordered the Trumps to pay $450 million in restitution, but that judgment is under appeal.

The Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Alan Weisselberg, served five months in jail last year for lying during his testimony in that civil trial. Weisselberg, the architect of the Cohen reimbursement scheme, according to hush money trial testimony, did not appear as a witness in the Trump criminal trial.

Trump has announced his intention to appoint the two lead defence attorneys in his trial, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, to high-ranking jobs in the US Justice Department. Blanche, a former federal prosecutor, would become the Deputy Attorney General if his nomination is approved by the US Senate.


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