In the Stormy Daniels affair, Donald Trump’s guilt is confirmed but he is not sentenced to any sentence

A New York judge on Friday, January 10, issued an exemption from sentence for Donald Trump in the case of hidden payments to an adult film actress, ratifying a historic criminal conviction for an elected president of the United States.

Donald Trump appeared by video during this hearing at Manhattan Criminal Court, New York, denouncing “a shame for the system”. With this symbolic sentence, he will enter the White House on January 20, at the age of 78, with the label of a habitual criminal.

The former real estate mogul was convicted on May 30, 2024, in this case of hidden payments to Stephanie Clifford, an adult film actress known as Stormy Daniels, of “aggravated accounting falsification to conceal a plot to pervert the 2016 election”.

Symbolic burden

But the burden of this conviction will be above all symbolic, for the one who escaped any legal consequences in the three other cases in which he had been indicted, including the most serious before the federal justice for his illegal attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election. In this case, special prosecutor Jack Smith abandoned the prosecution after the election of Donald Trump on November 5, when the trial had not yet started.

The future president was not forced to come in person to Manhattan Criminal Court on Friday to hear his sentence, as Judge Merchan granted him the opportunity to appear by video at the hearing. The magistrate, whom Donald Trump had showered with insults on social networks, had also guaranteed that a prison sentence, “impossible to implement”was excluded for the one who is preparing to govern the first world power.

In the spring of 2024, the one who was still a presidential candidate had to go almost every day for six weeks to the criminal court, and attend the debates in this case mixing politics, money and sex scandal.

A sentencing postponed several times

The jury found him guilty of 34 counts of accounting falsification to hide from voters the payment of $130,000 (around 126,150 euros) to Stormy Daniels, at the end of his first victorious campaign in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, whose trial had revealed behind the scenes. The money was paid to buy the actress’ silence about a sexual relationship she claimed to have had in 2006 with Donald Trump, a relationship he has always denied.

Assailed by appeals from lawyers and following a major decision by the Supreme Court on 1^is July on presidential immunity, Judge Merchan had to postpone sentencing several times, from July to September, then to November, after the presidential election.

As in the other cases in which he was prosecuted, Donald Trump presented himself as the victim of a “witch hunt” orchestrated by his political adversaries, a speech that he tirelessly delivered and of which his supporters were convinced.