NEW YORK (LifeSiteNews) — Returning President Donald Trump will not receive any fine or prison time for his conviction related to “hush money” payments to pornographic performer Stephanie “Stormy Daniels” Clifford, Judge Juan Merchan ruled Friday morning.
In May 2024, a New York jury convicted Trump on 34 counts of allegedly falsifying business records pertaining to a $130,000 payment to Daniels arranged by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in October 2016, ostensibly for her to keep quiet about an adulterous relationship Trump contends never happened, as well as a related $420,000 Trump paid to Cohen.
Left-wing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump over that payment in March 2023, claiming the $130,000 was a campaign expenditure not recorded as such in payments to Cohen listed as “legal expenses” in 2017. Many observers have faulted the prosecution and conviction as politically motivated contortions of both the law and the facts of the case.
During Friday’s hearing, Merchan sentenced Trump to “unconditional discharge,” meaning that he will not face any formal penalty such as prison, fines, or probation, though the judge stressed that the powers of the presidency cannot “erase a jury verdict” or “reduce the seriousness of the crime or justify its commission in any way.”
“The Radical Democrats have lost another pathetic, unAmerican Witch Hunt,” Trump reacted on Truth Social, declaring that the outcome “proves that, as all Legal Scholars and Experts have said, THERE IS NO CASE, THERE WAS NEVER A CASE, and this whole Scam fully deserves to be DISMISSED.”
The day before, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to reject Trump’s request to block sentencing, although the decision proved to be moot, and Merchan had already said he would not give an incoming president jail time.
Final resolution of the hush money case means all four major prosecutions of Trump, which critics framed as politically-motivated lawfare intended to hurt his chances in the 2024 election, are now behind him, following the collapse of two federal cases over his handling of classified documents and potential culpability in the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot, and of a Georgia case over his contesting of the 2020 election results.