No Jail, No Fine: Trump Becomes 1st US President to be Sentenced For Felony in Hush Money Case

New Delhi: President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced Friday in his hush-money case, with Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan opting for an "unconditional discharge," meaning no jail time, fines, or probation. This punishment-free decision brings an end to the high-profile case, which marked the first time a former president faced criminal charges in a courtroom. Although the judge had the option to sentence Trump, 78, to up to four years in prison, he chose a sentence that avoided complex constitutional issues, allowing Trump to return to the White House without facing immediate legal consequences. This verdict ensures that Trump will become the first convicted felon to assume the presidency. 

In a departure from his previous trial appearances, where Trump addressed the media outside the courthouse, the former president did not attend in person on Friday. Instead, he made a brief virtual appearance from his home in Palm Beach, Florida. This case was one of four criminal indictments Trump faced, but it is the only one to have gone to trial. Legal experts suggest it may also be the only one that results in a conviction.

‘A Political Witch Hunt to Damage My Reputation’, Says Trump 

Trump, wearing a dark suit and seated next to one of his lawyers with an American flag in the background, appeared on a video screen as he again insisted he did not commit a crime. 

“It’s been a political witch hunt. It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election, and obviously, that didn’t work,” Trump said

He called the case “a weaponization of government” and “an embarrassment to New York.”

Trump’s sentence of an unconditional discharge caps a norm-smashing case that saw the former and future president charged with 34 felonies, put on trial for almost two months and convicted by a jury on every count. Yet, the legal detour — and sordid details aired in court of a plot to bury affair allegations — didn’t hurt him with voters, who elected him to a second term.

Merchan said that like when facing any other defendant, he must consider any aggravating factors before imposing a sentence, but the legal protection that Trump will have as president “is a factor that overrides all others.”

“Despite the extraordinary breadth of those legal protections, one power they do not provide is that they do not erase a jury verdict," Merchan said.

Trump, briefly addressing the court by video, said his criminal trial and conviction have “been a very terrible experience” and insisted he committed no crime.

Before Friday's hearing, Merchan had indicated he planned the no-penalty sentence, called an unconditional discharge, which meant no jail time, no probation and no fines would be imposed.

Prosecutors said Friday that they supported a no-penalty sentence, but they chided Trump's attacks on the legal system throughout and after the case.

“The once and future President of the United States has engaged in a coordinated campaign to undermine its legitimacy,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said.

Rather than show remorse, Trump has “bred disdain” for the jury verdict and the criminal justice system, Steinglass said, and his calls for retaliation against those involved in the case, including calling for the judge to be disbarred, "has caused enduring damage to public perception of the criminal justice system and has put officers of the court in harm’s way.”

As he appeared from his Mar-a-Lago home, the former president was seated with his lawyer Todd Blanche, whom he’s tapped to serve as the second-highest ranking Justice Department official in his incoming administration.

“The American voters got a chance to see and decide for themselves whether this was the kind of case that should’ve been brought. And they decided," Blanche said. “And that’s why in 10 days President Trump is going to assume the office of the president of the United States.”

What Happened Before Hearing? 

Before the hearing, a handful of Trump supporters and critics gathered outside. One group held a banner that read, “Trump is guilty.” The other held one that said, “Stop partisan conspiracy” and “Stop political witch hunt.”

The hush money case accused Trump of fudging his business' records to veil a $130,000 payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels. She was paid, late in Trump’s 2016 campaign, not to tell the public about a sexual encounter she maintains the two had a decade earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them, and he contends that his political adversaries spun up a bogus prosecution to try to damage him.

“I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made up charge,” the Republican president-elect wrote on his Truth Social platform last week. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the charges, is a Democrat.

Bragg's office said in a court filing Monday that Trump committed “serious offenses that caused extensive harm to the sanctity of the electoral process and to the integrity of New York’s financial marketplace.”

While the specific charges were about checks and ledgers, the underlying accusations were seamy and deeply entangled with Trump’s political rise. Prosecutors said Daniels was paid off — through Trump's personal attorney at the time, Michael Cohen — as part of a wider effort to keep voters from hearing about Trump's alleged extramarital escapades.

Trump denies the alleged encounters occurred. His lawyers said he wanted to squelch the stories to protect his family, not his campaign. And while prosecutors said Cohen's reimbursements for paying Daniels were deceptively logged as legal expenses, Trump says that's simply what they were.

“There was nothing else it could have been called,” he wrote on Truth Social last week, adding, “I was hiding nothing.”

Trump's lawyers tried unsuccessfully to forestall a trial. Since his May conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records, they have pulled virtually every legal lever within reach to try to get the conviction overturned, the case dismissed or at least the sentencing postponed.

The Trump attorneys have leaned heavily into assertions of presidential immunity from prosecution, and they got a boost in July from a Supreme Court decision that affords former commanders-in-chief considerable immunity.

Trump was a private citizen and presidential candidate when Daniels was paid in 2016. He was president when the reimbursements to Cohen were made and recorded the following year.

Merchan, a Democrat, repeatedly postponed the sentencing, initially set for July. But last week, he set Friday's date, citing a need for “finality.” He wrote that he strove to balance Trump's need to govern, the Supreme Court's immunity ruling, the respect due a jury verdict and the public’s expectation that "no one is above the law.”

Trump's lawyers then launched a flurry of last-minute efforts to block the sentencing. Their last hope vanished Thursday night with a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that declined to delay the sentencing.

Meanwhile, the other criminal cases that once loomed over Trump have ended or stalled ahead of trial. After Trump's election, special counsel Jack Smith closed out the federal prosecutions over Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden . A state-level Georgia election interference case is locked in uncertainty after prosecutorFaniWillis was removed from it.

(With Inputs From AP)