President-elect Donald Trump’s hush money case was heard by a New York judge on Friday. The judge stated he was not inclined to impose jail time and set sentencing for 10 days prior to Trump’s January 20 inauguration.
Trump, the first past president to be found guilty of a felony, can attend his sentence on January 10 in person or online, according to Judge Juan Merchan.
Merchan rejected several arguments from Trump’s attorneys to have the conviction overturned and instead upheld the New York jury’s verdict in an 18-page ruling.
According to the judge, he was leaning toward an unconditional discharge, which would release the real estate billionaire from all restrictions, rather than incarceration.
The sentence would nevertheless see Trump entering the White House as a convicted felon.
The 78-year-old Trump potentially faced up to four years in prison but legal experts — even before he won the November presidential election — did not expect Merchan to send the former president to jail.
“It seems proper at this juncture to make known the Court’s inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration,” the judge said, noting that prosecutors also did not believe a jail term was a “practicable recommendation.”
Trump, who is expected to lodge an appeal that could potentially delay his sentencing, denounced the decision late Friday.
“This illegitimate political attack is nothing but a Rigged Charade,” he wrote on his platform Truth Social.
Calling Merchan a “radical partisan,” Trump added that the order was “knowingly unlawful, goes against our Constitution and, if allowed to stand, would be the end of the Presidency as we know it.”
On the day of the 2016 election, Trump paid porn star Stormy Daniels hush money to prevent her from disclosing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter. In May, he was found guilty in New York on 34 charges of manipulating business documents to conceal this payment.
On a number of grounds, including the Supreme Court’s historic decision last year that past US presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution for a variety of official acts carried out while in office, Trump’s lawyers had attempted to have the case dismissed.
Merchan rejected that argument but he noted that Trump will be immune from prosecution once he is sworn in as president.
“Finding no legal impediment to sentencing and recognizing that Presidential immunity will likely attach once Defendant takes his Oath of Office, it is incumbent upon this Court to set this matter down for imposition of sentence prior to January 20, 2025,” the judge said.
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