The judge in the “hush money” case has said that President-elect Donald Trump will escape a prison sentence while upholding his conviction.
Judge Juan Marchan said on Friday that he would give Trump an “unconditional discharge” when he comes up for sentencing on January 10, just 11 days before taking over as the US President.
Upholding the conviction, he dismissed Trump’s lawyers’ contention that a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity applied to this case because his actions were not official.
The case was brought by local Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, who was elected to the post as a Democrat, accusing Trump of violating the law by showing on account books the payment he made to a porn star as legal expenses.
The payments were made through his lawyer to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels who had claimed she had a tryst with him.
Bragg made each check that was cut for the payments as a separate offence to show that Trump was convicted of 34 crimes.
Although Vice President Kamala Harris, who ran against Trump in last year’s election, and her supporters made that a major campaign point, voters ignored it and elected Trump.
Trump presented himself as a martyr hounded by politically-motivated prosecutions.
But Marchan’s ruling puts the cloud of criminal conviction over Trump when he is sworn in as President on January 21.
Trump would have faced a maximum sentence of four years – an absurdity given that he would be President elected by a majority of voters.
Reacting on Truth Social, Trump called Marchan upholding the conviction an “illegitimate political attack” and “a Rigged Charade”.
He said that Marchan put a gag order limiting what he can say about the case “just so I cannot expose his and his family’s disqualifying and illegal conflicts”.
Marchan’s daughter is the president of a company that did campaign work for Kamala Harris, the Vice President who ran against Trump in last year’s election.
Two federal cases brought against him by a special counsel have been dropped.
One accused him of violating the Official Secrets Act by retaining records after leaving office.
Another was about election interference because of his alleged role in instigating the January 6, 2021, riots while President Joe Biden’s election was being certified by the Congress.
Another local case in Georgia accusing him of election interference has been snarled by accusations of impropriety by the prosecutor, an elected Democrat, who hired an inexperienced lawyer who was then her boyfriend to prosecute the case.
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