Trump sentenced in historic Manhattan hush money case

MANHATTAN (CN) — President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced to unconditional discharge on Friday on 34 counts of falsifying business records, cementing his status as a convicted felon in New York City just 10 days before his inauguration.

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan kept his promise in hitting Trump with the unique sentence, which keeps the former and soon-to-be president from having to serve a tangible punishment like community service or a fine, but preserves thejury’s guilty verdict.

Trump took Merchan up on his offer to attend the proceedings virtually, appearing from Florida via a Microsoft Teams call alongside his lead attorney — and Trump’s pick for U.S. deputy attorney general — Todd Blanche. The pair sat in front of two American flags, as captured by a pool of press photographers on a courtroom monitor before the hearing began.

In his allocution, Trump reiterated the statements that he’s made about the case since it was brought in 2023: that it was politically motivated and should have never been prosecuted.

“This has been a very terrible experience,” Trump told the court. “I think it has been a tremendous setback for New York and the New York court system.”

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

Trump lamented certain details of the case, maintaining that he did not falsify any records when repaying hush money expenses, despite the jury’s verdict that found otherwise.

“The ‘falsification of business records,’ as they say, was calling a legal expense in the books where everybody could see them, a legal expense.” Trump said. “I didn’t call them construction, concrete work. I didn’t call them electrical work. I called a legal expense a legal expense, and for this I got indicted.”

Trump also repeated the baseless claim that federal actors interfered with his prosecution to worsen his odds at winning the 2024 presidential election.

“Obviously, that didn’t work,” Trump said.

While he does not face a firm punishment, Trump still held that the sentencing shouldn’t have happened in the first place. He campaigned for the case to be dropped with a flurry of filings to the judge over the past several weeks, which all came up empty.

On Friday, Merchan reiterated the importance of upholding the jury’s verdict, telling Trump that, in many ways, his trial was no more unique or significant than the other 32 that occurred at the same time.

In fact, it is only Trump’s status as a former and incoming president that afforded him the opportunity to duck a more serious sentence for these crimes, the judge said.

“To be clear, the protections afforded to the office of the president are not a mitigating factor,” Merchan said firmly. “They do not reduce the seriousness of the crime or justify its commission in any way. The protections are, however, a legal mandate, which pursuant to the rule of law, this court must respect and follow.”

“Ordinary citizens do not receive those legal protections,” Merchan added, specifying that “Donald Trump the ordinary citizen, Donald Trump the criminal defendant, would not be entitled to such considerable protections.”

Prosecutors acknowledged that, given that status, it would be unrealistic to impose jail time or other punishments against Trump in this case. Still, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass lambasted the president-elect’s constant attacks on the legal system throughout the prosecution.

“Instead of preserving, protecting, and defending our constitutionally established system of criminal justice, the defendant, the once and future president of the United States, has engaged in a coordinated campaign to undermine its legitimacy,” Steinglass said. “Far from expressing any kind of remorse for his criminal conduct. The defendant has purposely bred disdain for our judicial institutions and the rule of law.”

Steinglass added that Trump’s rhetoric has “only ratcheted up” since the jury’s verdict, and reminded the judge that he once called Trump’s conduct a “direct attack on the rule of law, itself.”

Merchan made the sentence official at 10:07 a.m. EST. The hearing took just over 30 minutes.

Thrice delayed, the sentencing went ahead as planned Friday amid tireless efforts from Trump and his legal team to put the hearing on ice. Trump had claimed that, as the president-elect, he is immune from prosecution and cannot be sentenced. But despite taking those argumentsall the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, his efforts proved futile.

Trump was already the first president in the nation’s history to be charged with a crime; now, he’s also the first to be convicted and sentenced.

The monumental criminal case came to a head this past May, when a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of fudging his company records to cover up a sprawling hush money scheme aimed at quelling bad press during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Throughout a six-week trial that ran from April to May 2024, New York prosecutors presented evidence that illustrated the great lengths to which Trump went to cover up his adulterous past during his bid for the White House. The efforts included entering into an agreement with the publisher of The National Enquirer tabloid to buy up the media rights to stories of Trump’s past trysts, then hiding them away to ensure that they were never published.

Trump’s former personal attorney and “fixer”Michael Cohen testified that he orchestrated a $150,000 deal for the Enquirer to buy the story of Karen McDougal — a former Playboy model who claims to have had a roughly yearlong affair with Trump — then hide it from the public to better Trump’s presidential odds.

Cohen said that he later orchestrated a similar deal with adult film starStormy Daniels, whom Trump was supposedly concerned would share details from their 2006 sexual encounter at an inopportune time for his campaign. But unable to convince the Enquirer to purchase Daniels’ story rights this time, Cohen said Trump directed him to pay Daniels the hush money himself to the tune of $130,000.

When it came time to pay Cohen back, Cohen said that Trump himself signed off on a monthly payment plan to illegally disguise the reimbursements as standard legal fees.

That’s what eventually landed Trump in hot water: Each invoice, check and ledger entry — 34 in total — was a falsified business record, leading to the charges.

Throughout the trial and after its conclusion, Trump and his allies repeatedly attacked the case’s judge, jury, prosecutors and proceedings as a whole. The president-elect baselessly suggested that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had collaborated with Trump’s political opponents in the federal government to bring the local charges against him to hurt his chances at winning the 2024 presidential election.

Trump claimed on numerous occasions that the case was “rigged” from the very beginning.

“Mother Teresa could not beat these charges,” Trump lamented to reporters when jurors started deliberating in late May.

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