Judge Hints No Jail for Trump

State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said he would sentence Trump next Friday, rejecting the former and future president's argument that the verdict couldn't remain in place after his re-election.

Manhattan prosecutors had agreed to postpone the sentencing until after Trump's second term or even never hold the proceeding, both of which the judge rejected.

"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 the imposition of sentence prior to January 20, 2025," Merchan wrote in an 18-page decision.

The judge said he wasn't inclined to send Trump to jail, and that an unconditional discharge or a sentence without any punishment-was "the most viable solution to ensure finality and allow Defendant to pursue his appellate options." Merchan said that Trump could appear for his sentencing, which will be held in state court in Manhattan, either virtually or in person.

The New York prosecution made Trump the first former president in history to be found guilty of a crime. After a more than monthlong trial last year, a jury in May convicted him of covering up hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of his 2016 election. Daniels alleged a sexual encounter with Trump, a claim he denies.

Trump in a social-media post criticized the judge's decision and called him "a radical partisan." A spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Democrat who Bragg, a brought the case, declined to comment.

A jury last year convicted Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records, which are the state's lowest-level felony and carry no mandatory sentence. He had faced a range of potential punishments, from probation or a fine to jail time, though many observers believed incarceration was unlikely, even before Trump was elected in the fall.

Merchan said tossing Trump's conviction would damage public confidence in the rule of law. "It was the premeditated and continuous deception by the leader of the free world that is the gravamen of this offense," he wrote.

Prosecutors alleged Trump conspired with a tabloid publisher and his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to influence the 2016 election by burying negative stories that could hurt his candidacy.

Trump denied wrongdoing and said the case was politically motivated. The former president campaigned for reelection from the courthouse and raised funds off the narrative that he was being treated unfairly.

The prosecution is the only of four criminal cases against Trump to have gone to trial.

Special counsel Jack Smith dropped two federal cases that accused Trump of unlawfully retaining classified documents and plotting to overturn the 2020 election, citing Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

An election-interference prosecution of Trump and his associates in Georgia has suffered a series of setbacks, including a possible fatal blow last month when an appeals court removed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the case.

Trump's New York defense attorneys-two of whom the president-elect plans to appoint to high-level posts in the Justice Department during the new administration-sought to have that case dismissed both before and after Trump won the election. In December, Merchan denied one earlier bid, finding that the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling granting former presidents broad immunity didn't affect the case, which largely involved conduct that took place before Trump began his first term in the White House.

His lawyers separately argued that Trump's election, and rules around the presidential transition, necessitated throwing out the jury's verdict. Keeping the conviction on the books during his presidency would result in stigma and could distract Trump from his presidential duties, they said.

"The stigma associated with an ongoing criminal prosecution-particularly where, as here, the proceedings are politically motivated and wholly lacking in integrity-is constitutionally unacceptable," his lawyers wrote.

Bragg argued that the conviction should stand due to "overwhelming evidence" of Trump's guilt and the importance of preserving confidence in the criminal-justice system. The law doesn't provide Trump immunity from criminal proceedings before his inauguration, prosecutors said. And during his presidency, they said, the case was unlikely to create distraction because it already went to trial.