United States President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced Friday in his hush money case, but the judge declined to impose any punishment, an outcome that cements his conviction while freeing him to return to the White House unencumbered by the threat of a jail term or a fine.
The punishment-free judgment marks a quiet end to an extraordinary case that for the first time put a former president and major presidential candidate in a courtroom as a criminal defendant.
The case was the only one of four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that ever will.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan could have sentenced the 78-year-old Republican to up to four years in prison.
Instead, he chose a sentence that sidestepped thorny constitutional issues by effectively ending the case but assured that Trump will become the first person convicted of a felony to assume the presidency.
Unlike his trial last year, when Trump brought allies to the courthouse and addressed waiting reporters outside the courthouse, the former president did not appear in person Friday, instead making a brief virtual appearance from his home in Palm Beach, Florida.
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.
Trump 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.
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.”
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.