Sentencing finalizes Trump's conviction, ends embarrassing chapter in his return to the White House
For the six weeks Donald Trump spent in a Manhattan courtroom for his criminal hush money trial last year, the former president never spoke a word on the record.
That changed Friday at the president-elect's sentencing.
Trump originally faced up to four years in prison after being convicted of falsifying business records as part of an alleged scheme to influence the 2016 election by paying off an adult film actress who said she had a long-denied affair with Trump in 2006, three months after his wife gave birth to his youngest son.
Appearing virtually in the same courtroom where the trial took place, Trump -- now the president-elect -- used Friday's sentencing hearing to unleash a seven-minute recitation of his grievances with the criminal justice system.
He proclaimed his innocence, bragged about his election victory, accused prosecutors of engaging in a political witch hunt, criticized his former lawyer and home state, and contrasted his experience with an ongoing natural disaster.
"With all that's happening in our country today, with a city that's burning to the ground -- one of our largest, most important cities burning to the ground -- with wars that are uncontrollably going on, with all of the problems of inflation and attacks on countries, and all of the horrible things that are going on, I got indicted over calling a legal expense a legal expense," said Trump.
The unprecedented hearing -- which Trump attended virtually from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida -- capped off a yearslong tumultuous and, at times, embarrassing ordeal that resulted in him becoming the first former president to be criminally convicted. While the sentencing cemented his status as a convicted criminal, Trump suggested that his electoral victory in November amounted to a political acquittal, claiming voters' support for him was a wholesale rejection of what he called the "weaponization of government."
"The people of our country got to see this firsthand because they watched the case in your courtroom," said Trump, who vowed to appeal the verdict. "They got to see this firsthand and then they voted, and I won and got the largest number of votes by far, of any Republican candidate in history."
Due to Trump's electoral victory and his forthcoming presidential immunity, Judge Juan Merchan imposed what he said was the "only lawful sentence" of an unconditional discharge. The unusual sentence -- which carried no punishment for Trump's actions -- finalized the judgment against Trump, allowing him to appeal.
Merchan suggested that Trump would have received a stiffer sentence had he been a private citizen -- but that the "extraordinary legal protections" provided by the office of the presidency left him no other options.
"It is the office of the president that bestows those far-reaching protections to the office holder, and it was the citizenry of this nation that recently decided that you should once again receive the benefits of those protections, which include, among other things, the Supremacy Clause and presidential immunity," said Merchan.
But Merchan was clear that while Trump's status as president-elect limited his sentencing options, it did not change the fact that a jury of twelve New Yorker's convicted the former president for what Merchan described in a filing last week as a "premeditated and continuous deception."
"Despite the extraordinary breadth of those protections, one power they do not provide is a power to erase a jury verdict," Merchan told the courtroom Friday.
Merchan had previously, in a court filing, criticized Trump for his "disdain for the Third Branch of government" and "lack of respect for judges, juries, grand juries and the justice system as a whole." But the judge refrained from explicitly criticizing Trump during Friday's hearing.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass felt otherwise. The assistant Manhattan DA said that Trump "caused enduring damage to public perception of the criminal justice system and has placed officers of the court in harm's way."
"Instead of preserving, protecting, and defending our constitutionally-established system of criminal justice, the defendant -- the once and future president of the United States -- has engaged in a coordinated campaign to undermine its legitimacy," Steinglass said.
According to Steinglass, the probation officer who interviewed Trump last year found that Trump "sees himself as above the law and won't accept responsibility for his actions." Steinglass highlighted that Trump threatened to retaliate against prosecutors, criticized the trial as corrupt and a sham "too many times to tabulate," and made "unrelenting" attacks on the justice system.
"Far from expressing any kind of remorse for his criminal conduct, the defendant has purposefully bred disdain for our judicial institutions and the rule of law, and he's done this to serve his own ends and to encourage others to reject the jury verdict that he finds so distasteful," Steinglass said.
Despite all that, Steinglass said that the Manhattan district attorney recommended against any punishment for the former president, adopting the same reasoning as Judge Merchan.
"The American public has the right to a presidency unencumbered by pending court proceedings or ongoing sentence-related obligations," Steinglass said.
Nineteen months after Trump was indicted, Merchan ended the sentencing with a kind remark to the defendant who would in ten days become the president of the United States.
"Sir, I wish you Godspeed as you assume your second term in office. Thank you," Merchan said.
