U.S. President-elect Trump avoids jail or punishment at hush money sentencing days before inauguration

NEW YORK, Jan 10 (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will not go to jail or face any other punishment for his criminal conviction stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, a judge ruled on Friday but said Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration would not erase the jury verdict.

Justice Juan Merchan’s sentencing of Trump, 78, to unconditional discharge places a judgment of guilt on his record and closes a case that had loomed over Trump’s bid to retake the White House.

Trump will be the first president to take office with a felony criminal conviction.

Merchan said he was imposing the sentence sparing Trump jail, a fine or probation because the U.S. Constitution shields presidents from criminal prosecution. But he said the protections afforded to the office “do not reduce the seriousness of a crime or justify its commission in any way.”

“The considerable, indeed extraordinary, legal protection afforded by the office of the chief executive is a factor that overrides all others,” Merchan said. “Despite the extraordinary breadth of those protections, one power they do not provide is the power to erase jury verdicts.”

Trump pleaded not guilty and has vowed to appeal the guilty verdict. Appearing with his lawyer on TV screens beamed to the courtroom with two American flags in the background, Trump called the case an unsuccessful attempt to thwart his re-election campaign.

“This has been a very terrible experience,” Trump said before sentencing, wearing a red tie with white stripes.

“I’m totally innocent, I did nothing wrong,” he said.

Trump did not testify during the six-week trial last year but has repeatedly disparaged Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case, in public statements.

Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor with Bragg’s office, said at the hearing Trump had engaged in a “coordinated campaign” to undermine the legitimacy of the case and “purposefully bred disdain for our judicial institutions.”

He said prosecutors supported the unconditional discharge sentence.

“The verdict in this case was unanimous and decisive, and it must be respected,” Steinglass said.

Now that he has been sentenced, Trump is free to pursue the appeal, a process which could take years and play out while he is serving a four-year term as president.

Trump fought tooth and nail to avoid the spectacle of being compelled to appear before a state-level judge so close to when he is due to be sworn into office. The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a last-minute bid by Trump to halt it.

Merchan closed the half-hour hearing by saying: “Sir, I wish you Godspeed as you assume your second term in office.”

The six-week trial last year played out against the extraordinary backdrop of Trump’s successful campaign to retake the White House.

Bragg, a Democrat, charged Trump, a Republican, in March 2023 with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump, who denied it.

Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in that election.

The Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of all 34 counts on May 30. Prosecutors argued that despite the tawdry nature of the allegations, the case was an attempt to corrupt the 2016 election.

Critics of the businessman-turned politician cited the charges and other legal entanglements he faced to bolster their contention that he was unfit for public office.

Trump flipped the script. He argued the case – along with three other criminal indictments and civil lawsuits accusing him of fraud, defamation and sexual abuse – was an effort by opponents to weaponize the justice system against him and harm his reelection campaign. He frequently lashed out at prosecutors and witnesses, and Merchan ultimately fined Trump $10,000 for violating a gag order.

As recently as Jan. 3, Trump called the judge a “radical partisan” in a post on his Truth Social platform.

A POLITICAL MIXED BAG

The hush money case was widely viewed as less serious than the three other criminal cases Trump faced, in which he was accused of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss and retaining classified documents after leaving the White House. Trump pleaded not guilty in all cases.

But Bragg’s case was the only one to reach trial in the face of an onslaught of challenges from Trump’s lawyers. After Trump’s Nov. 5 election victory, federal prosecutors backed off their two cases due to Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

The remaining state case, brought in Georgia over efforts to reverse the 2020 election results in that state, is in limbo after a court in December disqualified the lead prosecutor on the case.

The hush money case was a mixed bag politically. Contributions to Trump’s campaign surged after he was indicted in March 2023, likely helping him vanquish his rivals for the Republican nomination. During the trial, polling showed a majority of voters took the charges seriously, and his standing among Republicans slipped after the guilty verdict.

But the case quickly faded from the headlines, particularly after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance led him to drop out with Vice President Kamala Harris replacing him on the Democratic ticket, and after a gunman’s bullet came inches from killing Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Merchan initially scheduled the sentencing for July 11, but pushed it back multiple times at Trump’s request. In agreeing in September to defer the sentencing until after the election, the judge wrote that he was wary of being perceived as placing his thumb on the scales.

Falsification of business records is punishable by up to four years in prison. While Trump would have been unlikely to get jail time due to his advanced age and lack of a criminal history, legal experts said it was not impossible, especially given his gag order violations.

Trump’s victory and looming inauguration made a sentence of jail or probation even less practical.