By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2025-01-10 15:17:45 | Updated at 2025-01-10 18:49:04
3 hours ago
A Manhattan judge sentenced Donald Trump to no penalty Friday on his conviction for concealing a “hush money” payoff that hid a sex scandal from voters — making the president-elect the first person convicted of a felony to assume the White House.
Justice Juan Merchan — who oversaw a trial where jurors heard evidence that Trump paid off porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal to keep them quiet about alleged trysts — sentenced the Queens native to an “unconditional discharge.”
“Sir, I wish you godspeed as you assume a second term in office,” Merchan said.
The decision means the president-elect will not face any jail time, probation, or fines.
The sentencing, which Trump, 78, attended remotely on video — appearing on screen from Florida in front of two American flags — crystallizes the soon-to-be 47th commander-in-chief’s historic distinction of being the only US president ever to be convicted of felony criminal charges.
However, it also allows him to finally appeal the guilty verdict he claims stemmed from a political “witch hunt.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — who has gloated about becoming the first prosecutor to put an American president on trial — attended the hearing, sitting in the second row.
Ahead of the sentencing, Trump blasted the case as an “injustice” and reiterated his claims it was all a “witch hunt.”
“This is a case that should have never been brought, it’s an injustice, of justice,” he railed.
“The fact is, I’m totally innocent, I did nothing wrong.”
He then ripped the trial as an “embarrassment to New York.”
“I got indicted after calling a legal expense a legal expense. I want to say it’s an embarrassment to New York,” Trump seethed.
“I would just like to explain that I was treated very unfairly, and I thank you very much.”
Meanwhile, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass insisted that the verdict in this case was “unanimous and decisive” and that it “must be respected.”
He then blasted the future president using “dangerous rhetoric” throughout the trial, referencing Trump’s threats on the judge and prosecutors.
“Such threats are designed to have a chilling effect, to intimate folks, who have a responsibility to enforce our laws…. Because they fear he is simply too powerful to be held to the same rule of law as the rest of us,” Steinglass said.
“Put simply, this defendant has caused enduring damage to public perception of the justice system and has placed officers of the court in harm’s way.”
Friday’s hearing came after a years-long legal saga that reached a sensational boiling point when Trump was diverted from his campaign to attend the six-week trial.
Trump sat glumly at the defense table — with occasional outbursts of anger — while hearing X-rated testimony from Daniels, who took the stand and divulged racy details about her alleged romp with him at a July 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, California.
Bragg’s star witness was Michael Cohen, a disbarred attorney and convicted perjurer who spent more than a decade as Trump’s personal lawyer.
Jurors saw evidence that Trump worked with Cohen and the National Enquirer magazine to buy up the rights to and bury damaging information about him, like Daniels’ tale about a brief sexual encounter and McDougal’s account of having a months-long affair with Trump.
“What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Trump told Cohen in a secretly made recording, appearing to reference a $150,000 payoff to McDougal.
The prosecution centered on evidence that then-President Trump in 2017 lied on his company’s records to cover up Cohen’s $130,000 payoff that temporarily silenced Daniels from speaking about having sex with Trump in 2006.
The payoff came on the eve of the 2016 presidential election — when Trump was reeling from the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which he bragged on a hot mic about grabbing women by their genitals, Cohen told jurors.
“He said, ‘Absolutely. Do it. Take care of it.’’ Cohen testified.
Cohen also admitted to serially lying on Trump’s behalf and brazenly stealing $60,000 from his former boss — but insisted that he let Trump know in advance about paying off Daniels because “I wanted the money back.”
Jurors saw 11 invoices, 12 digital ledger entries and 11 checks to Cohen — most of which were signed by Trump — that showed the Trump Organization disguising Cohen’s repayments as phony legal services.
Trump declined to testify. But in daily addresses in the courthouse hallway, he blasted the trial as a political hit job orchestrated by Democrats.
He claimed, without providing evidence, that the judge, jury, and even the courtroom’s finicky thermostat — which he ripped as “freezing” — were all “rigged” against him.
Bragg, an elected Democrat, brought the case using an unusual and dense legal theory — giving critics ammo to attack the case as a selective prosecution of Trump, a Republican who at the time of the trial was likely to win the GOP’s presidential nomination.
Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor but doing it to cover up another crime is a felony.
That crime, Bragg’s office said, was that the payoff was part of an illegal scheme to hide sex scandals from voters before the 2016 presidential election, where Trump ended up defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Bragg’s office claimed that the so-called “catch and kill” payouts breached an obscure New York election law barring “conspiring to promote or prevent someone’s election through ‘unlawful means.’”
Merchan gave jurors three options for what “unlawful means” then underpinned the election fraud, including that the Daniels payment exceeded a $2,700 federal cap on campaign contribution limits.
But the court did not require jurors to select a specific unlawful means on the verdict sheet — a confusing move that gave the case’s critics fuel to claim, falsely, that jurors did not “unanimously” convict Trump.
Judge Merchan, who has insisted that politics have nothing to do with his rulings, donated $35 to Democrat causes in 2020, including $15 to President Biden, records show.
Friday’s sentencing came after a flurry of last-minute pleas made in vain to state and federal appeals courts by Trump’s lawyers. The attorneys claimed that pressing forward with the proceeding would unconstitutionally interfere with the president-elect preparing for his second term.
Trump was originally set to be sentenced on July 11, 2024, in the final stretch of his presidential campaign.
But Merchan agreed to push back the proceeding to let Trump’s lawyers argue in favor of reversing the conviction due to the Supreme Court’s bombshell “presidential immunity” ruling, in which the justices ruled that presidents cannot be prosecuted for their “official acts.”
Trump’s lawyers argue that the trial was “tainted” by evidence introduced from his time in the White House.
Bragg’s office has countered that covering up a payment to a porn star from the Oval Office is not one of a president’s “official” acts. The impact of any evidence that jurors arguably saw inappropriately is minor, they added.
The hush money case was the only one of four criminal cases that Trump faced to go to trial.
Federal charges that he hoarded classified documents at Mar-A-Lago and tried in vain to overturn the results of his 2020 presidential election loss to President Joe Biden before the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol have both been put on ice that he’s been elected president.
A state case in Georgia charging him with trying to tamper with the Peach State’s 2020 election results, meanwhile, is in limbo after an appeals court tossed a local district attorney from the case after a controversy over her romantic relationship with the man she hired to lead the prosecution.
