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Donald Trump will return to the White House as the first ever convicted president after his sentencing Manhattan courtroom, where the judge presided over his criminal trial for that money refused to send him to prison, but preserved the jury’s historic verdict against elected president.
New York judge Juan Merchan told the former president on January 10 that “the only lawful punishment” left for his crimes is an unconditional discharge.
“I wish you luck as you serve your second term in office,” he said before leaving court.
The 30-minute hearing marked the delayed end to the first successful prosecution of the former president and the only criminal case against Trump come to trial.
Trump was forced to attend each day of the trial, where he sat with his arms folded or leaned against the table in front of him while staring into space, closing his eyes or craning his neck to look at the jury and witnesses testifying before him.
But on January 10, in a courthouse once again packed with reporters and lawyers, Trump was nowhere to be found.
About 12 hours before the hearing, the Supreme Court denied his request to stay the proceedings, arguing that his conviction and sentence in the long-running criminal case unconstitutionally interfered with his upcoming presidency.
With all his options exhausted, Trump had no choice but to stand by Merchan’s final decision, securing the first criminal conviction of a president in US history.
More than seven months after a jury of 12 New Yorkers found Trump guilty of falsifying business records, the president-elect received an “unconditional discharge.”
The verdict preserved the jury’s unanimous verdict with no criminal consequences for the president-elect, but he will return to the White House with the stain of 34 convictions.
“The sanctity of the jury’s verdict and respect for it is a fundamental principle in our country’s jurisprudence,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the court on Friday.
On May 30, a unanimous jury convicted Trump of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a scheme to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose story about having sex with Trump threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 for the rights to her story; Trump reimbursed Cohen in a series of checks, some of which bounced from the White House.
Those fees were falsely recorded in accounting records as “legal fees,” fulfilling a conspiracy to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election.
Emails, phone records, text messages, invoices, checks signed by Trump in Sharpie and other documents — including a handwritten note from his accountants outlining the math for Cohen’s checks — gave jurors a paper trail.
Jurors also heard testimony from exes National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who promised to be the “eyes and ears” of the campaign by using his tabloid to “catch and kill” negative stories about Trump that he never intended to publish. He spent approximately $180,000 buying two scandalous stories, but refused to spend more by getting involved with Daniels.
Trump’s former White House aide Hope Hicks — who testified about campaign damage control after the release of the so-called Access Hollywood tape — told jurors that Trump didn’t want Daniels’ story out before Election Day.
Cohen — who said he often sought approval for his “loyalty” to “the boss” — agreed to pay Daniels out of his own pocket, took out a domestic line of credit to pay the cash and created a shell company from which he could transfer funds to Daniels’ lawyer.
Trump and Daniels also signed a nondisclosure agreement that prevented her from going public with her story, and her damning testimony at his criminal trial detailed what Trump sought to keep secret, according to prosecutors.
Daniels herself sat just steps away from Trump during her extraordinary testimony recalling the story that Trump had spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to prevent her from appearing in public.
She recalled in detail the brief but disturbing sex she allegedly had with the former president after a Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament nearly 20 years ago. She was unflinching under cross-examination by Trump’s lawyers, who tried to undermine her account and force her to admit she was making it up.
“If that story was untrue, I would have written it to be much better,” she said.
After two days of deliberation, the jury foreman quietly answered “guilty” 34 times.
The courtroom drama played out only to reporters and a handful of members of the public who were allowed inside the courthouse during the weeks-long trial, but the camera-lined corridors gave Trump a prominent campaign speech sounding board to portray himself as the victim of a politically motivated prosecution designed to keep him out of order.
He gave mixed words to reporters in the hallway every day of the trial, and his lawyers drew flattering portrayals of the former president and his business in witness testimony and in their opening and closing statements to jurors.
A trial order barring him from publicly attacking witnesses and jurors did not stop him from doing so. After he was fined $10,000 and threatened with jail time, a parade of high-profile allies joined him at the courthouse to attack prosecutors and judges on his behalf.
Trump’s third presidential campaign relied on a narrative of political persecution and retaliation against a justice system he accuses of conspiring against him.
A month after the jury’s verdict, on the last day of its term, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority handed down its landmark ruling on presidential “immunity,” which Trump has since used to try to close cases against him.
The Supreme Court’s “immunity” ruling partially shields Trump and all other presidents from prosecution for acts deemed “official” duties while in office, and provides for a presumption of “immunity” for acts in the “outer perimeter” of those “official” duties.
There is no immunity, superior or otherwise, for the “unofficial” actions of the President.
Hours after the July 1 Supreme Court ruling, Trump’s lawyers argued that evidence used against him at trial should fall under the high court’s ruling.