10 days before his return to the White House, Donald Trump on Friday became the first American president to be criminally convicted, at the end of the sentence handed down in New York as part of his trial for commercial fraud. The case concerned the concealment, during the 2016 presidential campaign, of a payment of money to buy the silence of a porn actress with whom the populist had an adulterous relationship.
In an expected decision, Judge Juan Merchan sentenced Donald Trump to unconditional release on Friday morning, while wishing “good luck” for his second term as president of the United States. The Republican must be sworn in on January 20 in Washington.
This is an unusual and lenient sentence handed down by a New York State court in this type of fraud, but which, despite everything, cements the criminal status of the next occupant of the White House.
Last week, in an 18-page decision, Judge Merchan paved the way by declaring that “unconditional release” seemed “to be the most viable solution to ensure the finality” of this trial, given the nature singular of the condemned. A conditional release would have imposed several conditions on the Republican, linking it with his employment, or with the payment of fines and compensation, a framework incompatible with his next function, the courts ruled.
On May 30, Donald Trump was found guilty by a jury of ordinary citizens of 34 counts of falsifying business documents in an attempt to cover up a sex scandal involving porn actress Stormy Daniels. A sum of $130,000 was paid to him to buy his silence. The Republican denied having had a relationship with her and denied all the illegal actions with which he was accused.
“I have been treated very, very unfairly, and I thank you very much for that,” said Donald Trump, who appeared Friday by video in court in New York. “It’s a political witch hunt… to damage my reputation, so that I lose the election, and obviously it didn’t work,” he added.
The man reiterated that this case should never have gone to court, while reviewing a litany of people, from cable network political commentators and conservative legal experts, supporting his point of view.
Supreme Court
On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court rejected the president-elect’s latest attempt to avoid facing this sentence. His lawyers asked the country’s highest court for a postponement of the proceedings because of the appeal against the verdict. The court’s order, issued by a vote of five to four, ultimately allowed Judge Juan Merchan to impose his sentence.
“We brought this case before a jury of ordinary New Yorkers and they returned a guilty verdict,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Thursday afternoon at a news conference. in New York. “Our job is to continue to give voice to this verdict and to ensure, as a fundamental principle of the administration of justice, that the voice of this jury is not erased. »
Since 2014, a third of defendants in business document falsification cases in Manhattan have received prison sentences of less than a year, according to an analysis by the New York Times in the last few months. Others faced imprisonment for more than a year, probation, parole, community service, or fines. No accused in this type of criminal case has benefited from an unconditional release.
Since leaving the White House, Donald Trump has faced several criminal charges, for attempting to overturn the 2020 elections, in Georgia as on Capitol Hill, or for a surreal storage of secret documents in his private residence in Mar-a-Lago. The concealment of a payment of money to silence Stormy Daniels represents the only case brought to fruition in a trial.
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