President-elect Donald Trump was formally sentenced on Friday in his hush money case, but the judge declined to impose any punishment.
The outcome of an unconditional discharge cements Trump’s conviction while freeing him to return to the White House unencumbered by the threat of a jail term, a fine or community service.
Trump was convicted last May of 34 counts of falsifying business records, making him the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes.
The jury found that he falsified records kept by his company to hide the purpose of reimbursements to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen, who had made a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 campaign to silence her claim of an extramarital sexual encounter. Trump denies they had sex.
However, unless the conviction for falsifying business records is someday overturned, Trump will have felonies on his criminal record, which will affect some of his rights.
Trump is registered to vote in Florida and he’ll be able to vote there. Florida does bars people convicted of felonies from voting, but restores their right to vote after they’ve completed their sentence.
And, under federal law, people convicted of felonies aren’t allowed to possess firearms.
By law, every person convicted of a felony in New York must provide a DNA sample for the state’s crime databank. Samples are collected after sentencing, typically when a defendant reports to probation, jail or prison. Samples can also be taken by a court or police official.
Still, the punishment-free judgment marks a quiet end to an extraordinary case.
It was a case that for the first time put a former president and major presidential candidate in a courtroom as a criminal defendant. The case was the only one of four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that ever will.
Trump said before sentencing that he was “totally innocent” and called the sentencing a “despicable event” on Truth Social afterwards.
“Today’s event was a despicable charade, and now that it is over, we will appeal this Hoax, which has no merit, and restore the trust of Americans in our once great System of Justice,” he wrote in a lengthy post on his social media platform after the sentencing.
“It’s been a political witch hunt,” he said. “It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election, and obviously, that didn’t work.”
The hush money case was the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments to go to trial.
Since his November 5 election, special counsel Jack Smith ended his two federal cases. One pertained to Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss; the other alleged he hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
A separate, state-level election interference case in Georgia is in limbo after an appeals court removed prosecutor Fani Willis from the case.