Donald Trump, the first convicted felon to be elected president, was sentenced today in his New York hush-money case, pleasing virtually no one.
Justice Juan Merchan sentenced the president-elect to an unconditional discharge, meaning Trump will face no penalties other than the stigma of a conviction. Trump was furious that he was sentenced at all, and had mounted a campaign in the courts of law and public opinion to stop it. His critics won’t be happy with the sentence itself, which is less than a slap on the wrist.
This mutual unhappiness was perhaps the only point of agreement at the hearing in Manhattan. “This defendant has caused enduring damage to public perception of the criminal-justice system and has placed officers of the court in harm’s way,” the prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said. Trump, meanwhile, said the case had “been a tremendous setback” for the New York courts. “This has been a very terrible experience,” he said.
The fact that someone could commit the crimes that Trump has and still win a presidential election remains galling, but the difficulty of getting to this moment, and the ways the other criminal cases against him stalled out, shows how significant the sentencing is, even considering its leniency. Trump’s criminal trials have demonstrated that there is not equal justice for all, but there is some justice. Bringing this case to sentencing was part of that.
The hearing itself held little drama. Trump didn’t come back to his hometown for it, opting to appear via video from Mar-a-Lago. Merchan had indicated in a filing last week that he would opt for an unconditional discharge, and prosecutors didn’t oppose that decision. Neither party may have had much choice. The idea that Trump was ever going to spend time in prison was always a dream. Trump continues to insist that he did nothing wrong, and on Truth Social claimed, incorrectly, that the discharge “proves that … THERE IS NO CASE.”
Trump fought hard to avoid even so light a sentence. After he was convicted in May 2024 on 34 felony counts relating to paying the porn actor Stormy Daniels to keep a sexual encounter secret, sentencing was scheduled for July 2024, but that was delayed until after the election. After winning, Trump tried unsuccessfully to get Merchan to throw out the conviction. His lawyers then asked an appeals court to block the sentencing, but were rejected. They also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to do so, but the justices narrowly rejected that. (Four conservatives—Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—would have granted the request.) He can still appeal his conviction, and has vowed to do so.
The resources Trump marshaled to fight against the sentencing hint at why this was the only case to go to trial as well as the only one to end in a conviction. The Justice Department brought federal charges against Trump related to subverting the 2020 election and hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Trump managed to get the former case before the Supreme Court, which granted astonishing immunity to a president; though the DOJ moved forward even under the new rules, Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped the charges once Trump won the election, a nod both to DOJ rules that bar prosecuting a sitting president and to Trump’s vow to kill the case. The documents case was effectively sabotaged by a Trump-appointed federal judge. Another case, in state court in Georgia, is in limbo after the district attorney was removed by judges, but would have been unlikely to proceed while Trump is in office anyway.
The New York sentencing doesn’t solve the fact that Trump managed to get off scot-free for two serious offenses: an attempt to steal an election, carried out mostly in plain sight, and refusing to turn over documents that no one disputes he refused to turn over. (Trump merely contends he had a right to keep them.) The sentence is, however, a rebuke to Trump’s claim that his political wins ought to erase any accountability for his actions. He invoked his electoral victories again during today’s hearings while criticizing his prosecution. This is, or should be, irrelevant.
“No doubt all public-official defendants would like to be able to say that winning their next election means everyone should just forget about their alleged crimes,” Randall D. Eliason wrote in The Atlantic in November. “That’s not how our system works. An election is not a jury verdict, and winning an election doesn’t make you any less guilty.”
Merchan was at pains today to make clear that Trump is granted certain immunities and privileges through the office of the president and that they do not attach to his person. This distinction is likely lost on Trump, and may be difficult for many other Americans to have faith in. In one sign of how tightly intertwined these things have become, the defense lawyers representing Trump today are poised to take top positions in the Justice Department once Trump is inaugurated.
Trump has indicated he will work hard to continue to erase the distinction once in office. The important thing about today’s proceeding, however, was not whether it ended with a bang or a whimper but that it concluded at all.
The post Trump’s Sentencing Made No One Happy appeared first on The Atlantic.
