Judge Juan Merchan Sentences Trump in New York Case

President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced Friday in his hush money case, but the judge declined to impose any punishment.

The outcome cements his conviction but frees him to return to the White House unencumbered by the threat of a jail term or a fine.

Trump’s was sentenced to an unconditional discharge after being charged with 34 felonies, put on trial for almost two months, and convicted by a jury on every count.

Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan could have sentenced Trump to up to four years in prison.

Merchan said, 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 as he appeared virtually from his Florida home, said his criminal trial and conviction has “been a very terrible experience” and insisted he committed no crime.

The president-elect again pilloried the case, the only one of his four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that ever will.

“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.

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

With Trump 10 days from inauguration, Merchan had indicated he planned a no-penalty sentence, called an unconditional discharge, and prosecutors didn’t oppose it.

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.

As he appeared from his Florida home, Trump 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.

“Legally, this case should not have been brought,” Blanche said, reiterating Trump’s intention to appeal the verdict. That technically can’t happen until he’s sentenced.

Regardless of the outcome, Trump will become the first person convicted of a felony to assume the presidency.

The hush money case accused Trump of fudging his business’ records to hide 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 said nothing sexual happened between them. His lawyers said he wanted to squelch the stories to protect his family, not his campaign.

“I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made up charge,” the president-elect wrote on his platform last week.

The Trump attorneys have argued Trump has 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’s defense argued that immunity should have kept jurors from hearing some evidence, such as testimony about some of his conversations with then-White House communications director Hope Hicks.

After Trump won the presidential election, his lawyers argued that the case had to be scrapped to avoid impinging on his upcoming presidency and his transition to the Oval Office.

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 attempted to block the sentencing. But Thursday night the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision not to delay the sentencing.

The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.

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