AA / Houston / Darren Lyn
US President-elect Donald Trump was convicted but exempted from sentence on Friday after being found guilty in a hidden payments case.
Donald Trump appeared by video during this hearing at Manhattan Criminal Court, and denounced what he considers to be “a disgrace to the system”, just hours after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal against the sentence. of his sentence ten days before his return to the White House.
”I am completely innocent. I did nothing wrong,” the president-elect said.
”It’s a political witch hunt. It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election, and obviously it didn’t work,” he added, referring to last fall’s presidential election, that he won.
Donald Trump could have been sentenced to up to four years in prison, but Judge Juan Merchan granted him unconditional release after being found guilty of 34 counts in a hidden payments case.
The former real estate mogul was convicted on May 30 of falsifying his company records to conceal a payment of US$130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
These payments were made to prevent the story about the actress’s alleged affair with Trump in 2006 from breaking during the 2016 presidential election.
The special circumstances of Donald Trump’s unconditional release mean that he will not have to serve a prison sentence or pay fines.
”At this point, I impose this sentence to cover all 34 counts,” said Merchan, who wished Trump good luck in his second term in the White House.
”Never before has this court been confronted with a unique and exceptional set of circumstances,” the judge continued. ”It’s a truly extraordinary case.”
Donald Trump called the case ‘a huge setback for the American justice system,’ adding that ‘this is a great embarrassment to the state of New York,’ with his legal team planning to appeal his conviction .
”It’s been a very terrible experience,” Donald Trump said during his virtual hearing, adding that the case had been ”mishandled” by New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg, whom the president-elect described as a ‘criminal’.
*Translated from English by Majdi Ismail
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