Trump Learns His Fate for Stormy Daniels Hush Money Felonies
Donald Trump’s long criminal saga over paying to cover up his alleged sex with Stormy Daniels will end next week with a whimper, the judge in his case said Friday.
Judge Juan Merchan announced that he would formally sentence Trump on Friday, Jan. 10.
The president-elect’s 34 felonies for falsifying business records are likely to result in an unconditional discharge, the New York judge announced. There will be no prison time, no fine and no probation, all of which had been on the table.
The decision is likely to please few, if any, of those involved in the case. Just being sentenced represents a defeat for the president-elect, who had wanted the case to be thrown out, claiming that it infringed on what he says is presidential immunity. It means he will enter his second White House term convicted and sentenced as a felon—the first president in history to have that status.
But the judge’s indication that he would be likely to give Trump a conditional discharge is far less than the prison sentence that those who had gathered outside the court when he was convicted in May had wanted, and which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had suggested he could recommend.
Judge Merchan wrote in a court order setting out the sentencing plan that an unconditional discharge was the “most viable solution” because it would allow Trump to appeal against his conviction. That would let appeal courts decide if the immunity that the Supreme Court granted presidents for official actions applied. The judge also blasted Trump in the sentencing order for the attacks that the then-candidate had for months made against him, his family, and prosecutors.
“Defendant’s disdain for the Third Branch of government, whether state or federal, in New York or elsewhere, is a matter of public record,“ read the ruling. ”Indeed, Defendant has gone to great lengths to broadcast on social media and other forums his lack of respect for judges, juries, grand juries and the justice system as a whole.”
In May, the president-elect was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up how he funneled money to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 in a bid to stop her alleging they had sex at a golf event just months after his youngest son Barron was born. She testified that before their brief missionary position assignation, she asked, “Oh, what about your wife?” and Trump replied, “Oh, don’t worry about that. We don’t sleep in the same room.” Then, she testified, she spanked him with a rolled up copy of a magazine with his face on the cover.
The case, brought by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, was the only attempt at prosecuting Trump after he left office for the first time to make it to trial, but had long been highly contentious. The 34 counts each related to underlying campaign finance offenses for which Trump had not been prosecuted despite a lengthy federal investigation that resulted in his attorney Michael Cohen going to federal prison.
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