The News
US President-elect Donald Trump was formally sentenced Friday after being found guilty last year of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to an adult film star, but avoided jail time or fines.
Justice Juan Merchan, who oversaw Trump’s six-week trial in the case last May, handed the incoming president an unconditional discharge, as expected — meaning he will face no additional penalties or conditions under New York state law.
“Never before has this court been presented with such a unique and remarkable set of circumstances,” Merchan said during the sentencing, which went ahead despite last-ditch efforts by Trump’s legal team to overturn or delay his conviction.
Handing down the unusually lenient sentence, Merchan acknowledged that the president-elect’s unprecedented position meant he had been spared harsher penalties. “Donald Trump, the ordinary citizen, Donald Trump, the criminal defendant, would not be entitled to such considerable protections,” he said.
Trump said that the trial had been “a very terrible experience” and that he was “totally innocent.”
With sentencing completed, Trump can appeal, though because the case was overseen by a New York state court rather than a federal one, he will not be able to pardon himself.
SIGNALS
Trump’s status as a felon cemented days before inauguration
Despite the lack of jail time or financial penalties, Trump’s criminal sentencing formalizes the incoming president’s status as a felon and as the first former or current US president to be convicted of a crime. Justice Merchan said previously that an unconditional discharge was “the most viable solution to ensure finality” in the case, with the incoming US president set to take office in a matter of days. Legal experts tended to agree: “There is no other sentence the judge could have given him,” one former state prosecutor told The Wall Street Journal. Joshua Steinglass, the public prosecutor in the trial, said he supported the sentence while also lambasting Trump’s apparent lack of remorse.
The case had little impact on Trump’s path to a second term
Despite being widely viewed as the least serious case Trump has faced in recent years, the hush money saga emerged as significant, as it was the only one to reach a criminal trial. The case colored the backdrop of Trump’s presidential campaign, though its political repercussions have been somewhat of a “mixed bag,” Reuters reported: Donations surged after he was indicted in March 2023, which likely helped him to secure the Republican nomination, though his standing among the GOP slipped following the guilty verdict. Crucially, the case appeared to have little effect on voters: “For some Americans, [Trump’s] legal difficulties were a reason to vote for him because it deepened their sense that they, like him, were victims,” one presidential historian told The Washington Post.
Concerns over Trump’s Department of Justice
Trump’s frequent lambasting of the US criminal justice system has led to suggestions he may seek to leverage the Justice Department to enact retribution upon taking office. Already the incoming president has named his personal lawyers to some of the department’s highest positions and vowed to pardon some of the 1,500 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 2020 attack on the US Capitol. The next four years will prove a significant test of the legal system’s independence, Lawfare editor Quinta Jurecic wrote in The New York Times. “The department itself… may soon be leveraged as a political tool against Mr. Trump’s enemies.” The fact that the electorate seems unconcerned points to an even greater concern, she added: a lack of faith in the institutions that govern US democracy.