Judge says no prison term for Trump in ‘hush money’ case

The judge in the “hush money” case has ruled that President-elect Donald Trump will avoid a prison sentence while upholding his conviction.

Judge Juan Marchan stated on Friday that he would grant Trump an “unconditional discharge” when he is sentenced on January 10, just 11 days before taking office as the US President.

While upholding the conviction, Marchan dismissed Trump’s lawyers’ argument that a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity applied to this case, as Trump’s actions were not official.

The case was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, who accused Trump of violating the law by listing payments made to a porn star as legal expenses in his account books. The payments were made through Trump’s lawyer to silence Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had an affair with him.

Bragg treated each check for the payments as a separate offense, resulting in Trump being convicted of 34 crimes.

Despite Vice President Kamala Harris and her supporters making this a major campaign issue, voters elected Trump. Trump presented himself as a victim of politically motivated prosecutions.

However, Marchan’s ruling places a criminal conviction over Trump as he prepares to be sworn in as President on January 21. Trump could have faced a maximum sentence of four years, though many saw this as an unlikely outcome given his election victory.

In response, Trump called Marchan’s upholding of the conviction an “illegitimate political attack” and “a Rigged Charade” on Truth Social. He also claimed that Marchan imposed a gag order to limit what he could say about the case, accusing the judge of having conflicts of interest, pointing out that Marchan’s daughter is the president of a company that worked on Kamala Harris’s campaign.

Two federal cases against Trump, brought by a special counsel, have been dropped. One involved allegations of violating the Official Secrets Act by retaining records after leaving office. The other concerned election interference related to his alleged role in instigating the January 6, 2021, riots during the certification of Joe Biden’s election.

Another local case in Georgia, accusing Trump of election interference, has faced complications due to accusations of impropriety by the prosecutor, an elected Democrat who hired an inexperienced lawyer, later revealed to be her boyfriend, to handle the case.