Donald Trump avoids jail or a fine, but the criminal conviction of the president-elect of the United States will remain on his record.
Donald Trump has become the first former US president convicted of a crime.
But the US president-elect avoided sanctions over his conviction for falsifying business documents in connection with hush payments to an adult film actress.
Judge Juan Merchán sentenced Trump to “unconditional release” on Friday, a day after the US Supreme Court rejected an attempt by Trump’s legal team to delay the sentencing, which took place before the inauguration of the president. Republican leader on January 20.
The decision means Trump’s conviction will appear on his permanent record, but he faces no prison, fine or probation, leaving him unimpeded from entering the White House.
Trump, who was previously president from 2017 to 2021, was found guilty in late May of 34 counts of falsifying business documents related to a $130,000 payment made to Stormy Daniels, among other things.
The US president-elect has denied wrongdoing and said he plans to appeal his conviction.
Appearing virtually at Friday’s sentencing hearing, Trump said his criminal trial and conviction had “been a very terrible experience” and insisted he committed no crime.
“It’s been a political witch hunt,” Trump said before the judge issued his decision. “It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election and obviously that didn’t work.”
Prosecutors in the New York case had argued that the hush payments were intended to conceal allegations of a sexual relationship with Daniels that could have been politically damaging.
The payments were made before the 2016 US presidential election, in which Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton to win the White House.
Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in the case, has denied having any sexual relationship.
Reporting from Washington, DC, on Friday morning, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said prosecutors had argued that “it was important that Donald Trump be held accountable.”
“The judge himself said that this was a unique and difficult case, but in the end he decided that the sentence had to be an unconditional release,” Fisher said.
Under New York’s penal code, a court can sentence a defendant to unconditional release if it “finds that no purpose would be served by imposing any conditions on the defendant’s release.”
Earlier this week, Trump’s lawyers had asked the Supreme Court to delay the sentencing “to avoid grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government.”
They argued that a ruling last year by the high court gives presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution, and that means some of the evidence should not have been presented in the case.
But a majority of Supreme Court justices said in a decision Thursday night that “alleged violations of evidence” in Trump’s trial in state court “can be addressed in the ordinary course of appeal.”
They also said that “the burden the sentence will impose” on Trump’s liabilities “is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court’s stated intent to impose a sentence of ‘unconditional release’ after a brief virtual hearing.”
Now that he has been sentenced, Trump is free to appeal, a process that could take years and play out as he serves his second four-year term as president.
“Today’s event was a despicable sham, and now that it is over, we will appeal this meritless hoax and restore Americans’ trust in our once great Justice System,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform after his judgment.
