President-elect Donald Trump received no jail time in his hush money case sentencing. While the move was expected, he’s now a convicted felon 10 days before the start of his second term.
Judge Juan Merchant sentenced Trump to an unconditional discharge on Friday, Jan. 10. That means even though he won’t go to jail, get probation or face any fines, he will enter office as a convicted felon, making him the first to carry that distinction into the White House.
Trump appeared virtually for the sentencing after being found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records. The charges involved an alleged scheme to hide a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in the last weeks of Trump’s first campaign in 2016.
The court released audio playback of the sentencing, which was not allowed to be broadcast on live media.
“This has been a very terrible experience,” Trump said at one point. “It’s been a political witch hunt. It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose that election and obviously that didn’t work.”
Shortly after the sentencing, with Trump’s gag order expired, the president-elect reiterated what he said during his court hearing posting to Truth Social that there was “never a case” and called it a “hoax” and an “un-American witch hunt,” adding that he will appeal.
The sentencing was allowed to go forward after the Supreme Court decided Thursday, Jan. 9 to reject Trump’s request to drop the proceeding. Trump’s legal team asked the court to intervene after the judge said he would go forward with the unconditional discharge ruling.
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