Judge upholds Trump’s felony conviction, but does not plan to order jail time
"Trump indictment follows 50 years of investigation on many fronts"
Related: Trump hush money judge 'still has another couple of tricks up his sleeve': legal expert Tom Boggioni January 4, 2025 1:01PM ET [...] "Judge Merchan is doing the best he can in a really terrible situation that none of us wanted to be in to try to at least send home a message that there is still, if not accountability for Donald Trump, accountability for others," Vance told the host. "That the criminal justice system can be used in virtually all cases. Look, I know neither one of us finds that to be completely satisfying, and I think we need to acknowledge that that's a problem here, but this is a judge who I think still has another couple of tricks up his sleeve." [...]
Sentencing is scheduled Jan. 10 for President-elect Donald Trump, who was found guilty by a jury in May of falsifying business records.
Updated January 3, 2025 at 9:47 p.m. EST yesterday at 9:47 p.m. EST [...] Merchan also dismissed a contention from defense lawyers that the case was weak from the start, saying that Trump’s stature — as a presidential candidate in 2016 and as president in 2017 — made his behavior all the more egregious.
Finding otherwise would “cause immeasurable damage to the citizenry’s confidence in the Rule of Law,” the judge wrote. “It was the premeditated and continuous deception by the leader of the free world that is the gravamen of this offense.” [...] Bragg’s office had floated the idea of postponing Trump’s sentencing until after his term ends in 2029. Prosecutors also suggested the judge consider abating the case against Trump while preserving the record of his conviction, a legal mechanism typically used when a defendant dies while proceedings are pending.
The district attorney’s office argued that throwing out the case entirely “would go well beyond what is necessary to protect the presidency and would subvert the compelling public interest in preserving the jury’s unanimous verdict and upholding the rule of law.”