Trump escapes punishment in New York hush money case
Farrah Tomazin
Washington: In normal times, being found guilty of a criminal conspiracy to manipulate an election would have resulted in jail time, a hefty fine, or some kind of probationary restriction.
But these are not normal times – and Donald J. Trump is no ordinary felon.
Eight months after a New York jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a pre-election sex scandal with a porn star, Trump has once again made history by becoming the first US president to be criminally sentenced – albeit with a rare and lenient “unconditional discharge”.
The no-strings-attached punishment is largely symbolic; the legal equivalent of being slapped on the wrist with wet lettuce.
It will not impede Trump’s presidential transition when he is sworn into office on January 20. It will not require him to spend any time on probation or incarceration.
And it will not have any impact on how he is regarded by friends, foes or world leaders, whose views about his guilt or innocence, and the merits of the so-called “hush money” case, have long been baked in.
But in explaining his decision, Judge Juan Merchan acknowledged that Trump’s status as a former president – and his election victory in November – had afforded him certain protections that “Donald Trump, the ordinary citizen” would not be entitled to.
“Never before has this court been presented with such a unique and remarkable set of circumstances,” he told Trump, who appeared in court via video from his home in Florida.
“Indeed, it can be viewed fairly that this has been truly an extraordinary case.”
Trump, however, viewed things differently.
“This has been a very terrible experience. I think it’s been a tremendous setback for New York and the New York court system,” he said.
“It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election, and obviously, that didn’t work.”
The sentence caps off a blockbuster trial that lasted six weeks, heard 22 witnesses and concluded after two days of deliberations.
Prosecutors had accused the 78-year-old Republican of a criminal conspiracy to “catch and kill” damning stories that could have derailed his chances of becoming president in 2016.
The seeds of that conspiracy were sown in August 2015 during a Trump Tower meeting with his then fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen and tabloid king David Pecker, the then publisher of the National Enquirer, who had promised to be Trump’s “eyes and ears” while he ran for office.
Numerous stories were buried on Trump’s behalf, but the case specifically related to a $US130,000 hush money payment Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who says she had sex with Trump in 2006 when he was newly married to his current wife, Melania.
This crossed a legal line, prosecutors said, because Trump reimbursed Cohen and falsified records to cover the whole thing up, thereby breaching electoral laws. In the end, a jury of seven men and five women unanimously agreed.
Yet, for all the time and resources that went into the trial, Trump has come out of it largely unscathed – and not just in this case, but all the other indictments against him.
Trump originally faced a trial in Washington, DC, for trying to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, another one in Georgia for trying to subvert the election results in that state, and a trial in Florida for mishandling classified documents.
However, he has managed to either delay or kill each case, bolstered by the US Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents immunity for acts committed in office.
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Indeed, of all the ways that Trump has managed to turn US politics on its head, this may be most striking. He has survived more scandals than any major party presidential candidate in history, successfully using the allegations against him to portray himself as a serial victim rather than a serial violator of the law.
If anything, the sentence that Merchan imposed will simply add to this, hardening what has long been Trump’s position: that the so-called “hush money” case – prosecuted by Democrat district attorney Alvin Bragg – was designed to thwart his re-election campaign and should have never been brought.
“The Radical Democrats have lost another pathetic, unAmerican Witch Hunt,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“After spending tens of millions of dollars, wasting over 6 years of obsessive work that should have been spent on protecting New Yorkers from violent, rampant crime that is destroying the City and State… I was given an UNCONDITIONAL DISCHARGE.
“That result alone proves that, as all Legal Scholars and Experts have said, THERE IS NO CASE, THERE WAS NEVER A CASE, and this whole Scam fully deserves to be DISMISSED.”
The case wasn’t dismissed, and the conviction will remain on his record. Overall, however, Trump got a pretty good deal. They don’t call him Teflon Don for nothing.
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