US judge sets Trump’s hush money case sentencing, says no jail time

A judge in the United States has set President-elect Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case for 10 January, little over a week before he’s due to return to the White House, but indicated he wouldn’t be jailed.

The development nevertheless leaves Trump on course to be the first president to take office convicted of felony crimes.

Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial, signalled in a written decision that he’d sentence Trump to what’s known as a conditional discharge, in which a case gets dismissed if a defendant avoids rearrest.

Merchan rejected Trump’s push to dismiss the verdict and throw out the case on presidential immunity grounds and because of his impending return to the White House.

The judge said he found “no legal impediment to sentencing” Trump and that it was “incumbent” on him to sentence Trump prior to his swearing in on 20 January.

“Only by bringing finality to this matter” will the interests of justice be served, Merchan wrote.

Trump was convicted in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records. They involved an alleged scheme to hide a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in the last weeks of Trump’s first campaign in 2016.

The payout was made to keep her from publicizing claims she’d had sex with the married Trump years earlier. He says that her story is false and that he did nothing wrong.

After Trump’s 5 November election win, Merchan halted proceedings and indefinitely postponed the sentencing so the defence and prosecution could weigh in on the future of the case.

Trump’s lawyers urged Merchan to throw the case out. They said it would otherwise pose unconstitutional “disruptions” to the incoming president’s ability to run the country.

Prosecutors acknowledged there should be some accommodation for his upcoming presidency, but they insisted the conviction should stand.

The hush money case was the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments to go to trial.

Since the election, special counsel Jack Smith has ended his two federal cases.

One pertained to Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss; the other alleged he hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

A separate, state-level election interference case in Georgia is largely on hold.