Donald Trump Sentenced to 'Unconditional Discharge' for His Felonies. Here's What That Means
By: New York (Yahoo News)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The president-elect's historic sentencing on Friday, Jan. 10, did not result in any real penalty for his crimes
Kyler AlvordFri, January 10, 2025 at 3:08 PM UTC4 min read
Blondet Eliot/ABACA/Shutterstock
President-elect Donald Trump attends the reopening ceremony of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on Dec. 7, 2024Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways
President-elect Donald Trump received a historic sentence on Friday, Jan. 10, from New York Judge Juan Merchan, dodging jail time and instead getting "unconditional discharge" for his 34 felony convictions.
He appeared virtually from Florida for his sentencing on Friday morning at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse in New York City. The hearing was scheduled at the last minute so that the case could get closure before Inauguration Day, and Trump's frantic attempts to cancel his sentencing were rejected by the New York State Court of Appeals and U.S. Supreme Court.
Before the sentence was handed down, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said that — while the Manhattan District Attorney's Office ultimately recommended unconditional discharge out of respect for the office of the presidency — he did not want to downplay Trump's "unsubstantiated attacks" on the rule of law and his "coordinated campaign" to undermine the jury's conclusion.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement
Related: Supreme Court Refuses to Stop Donald Trump's Criminal Sentencing in 'Hush Money' Case
Trump — who will be sworn in as United States president for a second time on Monday, Jan. 20 — was previously found guilty by 12 jurors of falsifying several business records to conceal a plot to tilt the 2016 presidential election in his favor.
With the unanimous guilty verdict, he became the first sitting or former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. His charges carried up to four years in prison at the court's discretion.
Related: Donald Trump Found Guilty on All Counts in Historic Criminal Trial, Making Him a Convicted Felon
ANGELA WEISS/POOL/AFP via Getty
Donald Trump and attorney Emil Bove appear virtually from Florida for the sentencing hearing on Jan. 10, 2025
What is unconditional discharge?
When Judge Merchan set Trump's sentencing date, he revealed that he did not intend to put the president-elect behind bars. Instead, the judge suggested, "unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable option to ensure finality and allow Defendant to pursue his appellate options."
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement
Unconditional discharge is, in effect, a non-punishment — a way that New York courts can acknowledge someone's conviction as valid while simultaneously releasing them "without imprisonment, fine or probation supervision."
The sentence is allowed to be handed out in cases where there appears to be "no proper purpose" for imposing restrictions upon someone. Judges are required by New York law to provide reasoning for their decision if they choose to go that route.
At Friday's hearing, Merchan said, "Never before has this court been presented with such a unique and remarkable set of circumstance," calling it a "truly extraordinary case."
Considering Trump's imminent inauguration — and speculation that a sitting president's sentence would need to be paused during their time in office anyway — Merchan chose the path of least resistance with his sentence.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement
Despite declining to give Trump a punishment, Merchan's final judgment is not exactly how the president-elect wanted things to play out: He is still a convicted felon.
Still, with a sentence now issued and the case closed, Trump can finally pursue a proper appeal of his verdict after seven months. His attorney said on Friday that he plans to.
Related: Donald Trump and Mike Pence Shake Hands During First Interaction in Nearly 4 Years
What did Trump get convicted for?
Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on May 30, 2024, after spending more than six weeks on trial in Lower Manhattan.
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office brought an unprecedented case against Trump that aimed to prove he not only falsified financial records "with intent to defraud" — in this instance, to mask a $130,000 hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the final days of his 2016 presidential election — but that he did so in order to conceal a second crime, which elevates the charges from misdemeanors to felonies.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement
In falsifying the records, the DA's office argued, Trump was more broadly attempting to bury evidence of an illegal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.
Related: Publisher David Pecker Testifies About Trump Team's Alleged Role in Burying Stories During 2016 Election
Colloquially called Trump's "hush money" trial, given that Daniels' hush money payment anchored the narrative, the Manhattan case went far beyond white-collar crime. It was the first of four criminal cases brought against the former president in 2023 — three of which hit on themes of election interference.
Through hard evidence and exhaustive witness testimony, Manhattan prosecutors painted a portrait of a former reality TV star who unlawfully tilted a presidential election in his favor by conspiring with powerful friends to suppress information from voters.
AdvertisementAdvertisement
Jurors' guilty verdict signaled that — beyond a reasonable doubt — the evidence presented to them supported the prosecution's story.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer.
Trump's three other criminal cases never went to trial, but in unrelated civil lawsuits since leaving the White House, Trump has been found liable of committing fraud while building his real estate empire as well as sexually abusing and defaming former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll. Each of those cases carried substantial fines.
Read the original article on People
- About Our Ads
Trolling, taunting, spamming, and off-topic comments may be removed at the discretion of group mods. NT members that vote up their own comments, repeat comments, respond to themselves, or continue to disrupt the conversation risk having all their comments deleted. Please remember to quote the person(s) you are replying to preserve the continuity of this seed. Posting debunked lies will be subject to deletion
No Fascism References, Source Dissing.
Tags
Who is online
60 visitors
All this means is that the left finally, though temporarily got to hang the tag "convicted felon" on him. The culmination of coordinated politically motivated cases against him.
Had this been anyone else but Trump the DOJ would have put a stop to it long ago.
Too bad he couldnt defend himself with a claim he was innocent. He always has to rely on procedural moves, delays and counter suits, and appeals to the SC which is stacked in his favor.
Innocence is simply not an option for this guy.
That's all it was. A politicized abuse of the system to get a label to attack Trump with. . It was so transparent it backfired, big time.
Temporarily???? He is still a 34 count "convicted felon", and always will be.
That is the only reason Merchan kept this farce going.
Mark my words.... He will be promoted to a higher judicial position within the next 12 months.
Don't want it to look too obvious.
Not if it's overturned on appeal, which is very likely. I don't think Trump is very worried of any future legal or personal ramifications from this fiasco
Yeah, everyone who isn't a committed Trump hater considers the verdict illegitimate and the only question for him is if he wants to spend the money to reverse it.
Coordinated how? By whom? You probably assume the people responsible couldn’t find their ass with both hands, but you assign this extraordinary level of competency to them so they could perpetrate this conspiracy.
The DOJ doesn’t the jurisdiction to do that, and there would be no grounds for such action, even if they did.
The excuses never end. All hail the Felon-in-Chief.
So you think the Trump administration will be corrupt enough to promote "favored" judges?
Don't they all? Why yes, yes they do...........
The Trump admin won't do anything with him.
It will be Hochul who will give him a NY appellate court position.
Lol. The proof is in the pudding. All this political prosecution accomplished was damaging the reputation of New York, the idea of non partisan justice, the Democratic Party and the ideologues who championed this show trial as legitimate. Just another entry in the Democratic parade of destroying the reputations of the institutions of this country. Well done!.
.
Get it right.
That would be Misdefelon in chief.
A creation just for Trump by triggered lawfare liberals.
The punishment fit the "crime".
Isn't it amazing. For all the talking from the left about how guilty he is, Trump is not punished at all for this.
More MAGA nonsense. If he wasnt guilty he wouldnt have had a court appearance this morning. The judges back was up against the wall. It is not practical to give Trump ANY punishment at the present time. The "no punishment" sentence simply serves to put Trumps criminal behavior on the permanent record. Which is the most the judge could do today.
That was always the goal.
IT WILL BE OVERTURNED!
The normal procedures for holding him accountable are just not feasible, and this ends the matter for the trial court.
I disagree. He was found guilty of felonies, time behind bars could have been the sentence. That is certainly feasible. Of course in ten days the sentence would have been held in abeyance in order for Trump to serve in the Oval Office, then restarted when his term ended. That is also legal. He could have been handed a fine.
But instead there was no punishment ordered for being convicted of all those felonies. Why is that? This gives the appearance that it was always political in the hopes of preventing Trump from winning the election and as the election has passed it's no longer feasible to impact the election. As it's very possible that this will be overturned on appeal, perhaps this was also an attempt to soften the image of the court and reduce the potential for blowback if the appeal is successful?
Time will tell. But this was never the best case against Trump and I think this will backfire on both the judge and the DA, as well as the State of New York.
" ....but that he did so in order to conceal a second crime, which elevates the charges from misdemeanors to feloniess....In falsifying the records, the DA's office argued, Trump was more broadly attempting to bury evidence of an illegal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election."
No one is sure to this day of what that second crime was, and if all this devious lawfare wasn't attempts to influence an election, I don't know what would be. After January 21st this silliness will quickly be forgotten.
I wouldnt bet on that.
He does still have his appeals process available to attempt to get the convictions overturned, but thats afforded to anyone thats been convicted.
It's underscores the whole illegitimate nature of the scheme. When prosecuting a President, everyone should be able to sum up and explain the crime. Perjury. Obstruction of Justice. Extortion. Even in the days AFTER the verdict, people on this site were posting completely mistaken summaries of the prosecution's theory. It's so convoluted that some people were posting new reports that actually got the summary correct and then still ended up botching it because they couldn't even understand their own links.
Where are all the leftists calling for Merchan's head for not sentencing Trump to prison?
You don't hear anything because even they know the trial was a farce.
They just wanted to call him a "convicted felon", and they got that wish.
Nobody cares.
Oh, I expect we'll hear from them should (and I expect it to happen) the appeals court overturn the conviction. At least now that can actually move forward.
I do find it rather ridiculous that for all the demanding to find him guilty, they then accept no punishment for this. It does seem to cement the idea that this was all political from the beginning and its only real purpose was to attempt to influence the 2024 election.
What was he going to do, sentence the president of the United States to home confinement in the White House or a 1000 hours of community service?
He was convicted of a crime by a legitimate jury after a legitimate trial and the exposition of the evidence. He 's guilty and the sentencing procedure verifies that.
LMAO!
He could have done anything he wanted if there was truly a crime.
Whatever he could have sentenced, he could have suspended the sentence until after Trump got out of office.
The only reason why he did what he did is because he only wanted his leftist friends to be able to call Trump a "convicted felon"
Nothing more.
Jonathon Turley just said it best.
"Sentencing by soundbite".
That's all the left wanted.
"Unconditional Discharge."
Eventually to be OVERTURNED!