President-elect Donald Trump is expected to be sentenced for 34 felony convictions on Friday, Jan. 10 — only a week and a half before he is sworn in as the 47th president of the United States.
In a long-awaited ruling on Friday, Jan. 3, New York Judge Juan Merchan denied Trump's motion to toss the historic guilty verdict, ordering that the president-elect appear for sentencing either virtually or in-person on Friday, Jan. 10, at 9:30 a.m. local time.
Though Trump's charges carry up to four years in prison, Merchan clarified in his ruling that he does not intend to sentence the politician to jail.
Instead, the judge suggested, "unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable option to ensure finality and allow Defendant to pursue his appellate options."
Donald Trump arrives for the first day of his Manhattan criminal trial on April 15, 2024.
Jabin Botsford-Pool/Getty
Trump's legal team has made several attempts to get the president's case dismissed since he was first convicted on May 30.
One of the defense's strongest arguments — that a July Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity was grounds for vacating the verdict — was previously shut down by Merchan in December.
In the judge's latest ruling to uphold the verdict, he highlighted the importance of honoring the trial process.
"The significance of the fact that the verdict was handed down by a unanimous jury of 12 of Defendant's peers, after trial, cannot possibly be overstated," he wrote. "Indeed, the sanctity of a jury verdict and the deference that must be accorded to it, is a bedrock principle in our Nation's jurisprudence."
A courtroom sketch of Judge Juan Merchan listening to Stormy Daniels' witness testimony at Donald Trump's trial on May 7, 2024.
Elizabeth Williams via AP
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office brought an unprecedented case against Trump that aimed to prove he not only falsified financial records "with intent to defraud" — in this instance, to mask a $130,000 hush money payment made to Stormy Daniels in the final days of his 2016 presidential election — but that he did so in order to conceal a second crime, which elevates the charges from misdemeanors to felonies.
In falsifying the records, the DA's office argued, Trump was more broadly attempting to bury evidence of an illegal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.
Prosecutors provided jurors with strong evidence of falsified business records, but proving that they could be attributed to Trump and charged as felonies was more difficult, relying heavily on witness testimony to shed light on the former president's involvement and intentions.
The defense argued that prosecutors' primary witness, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, could not be trusted to tell the truth, attempting to place doubt in the jurors' minds.
Donald Trump attends his Manhattan criminal trial on April 15, 2024.
ANGELA WEISS/POOL/AFP via Getty
Colloquially called Trump's "hush money" trial, given that adult film star Stormy Daniels' hush money payment anchored the narrative, the Manhattan case went far beyond white-collar crime. It was the first of four criminal cases brought against the former president in 2023 — three of which hit on themes of election interference.
Through hard evidence and exhaustive witness testimony, Manhattan prosecutors painted a portrait of a former reality TV star who unlawfully tilted the 2016 presidential election in his favor by conspiring with powerful friends to suppress information from voters.
Jurors' guilty verdict signaled that — beyond a reasonable doubt — the evidence presented to them supported the prosecution's story.
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Trump, who won the 2024 presidential election in November, will be sworn in for a second, nonconsecutive term as U.S. president on Monday, Jan. 20.
He will become the first sitting president in history to have been convicted of a felony.