Donald Trump to be sentenced in hush money case, days before return to White House

Trump faces sentencing for hush money conviction in a historic moment, with potential no-penalty sentence before inauguration.

In a singular moment in U.S. history, President-elect Donald Trump faces sentencing Friday (January 10, 2025) for his New York hush money conviction after the nation’s highest court refused to intervene.

Like so much else in the criminal case and the current American political landscape, the scenario set to unfold in an austere Manhattan courtroom was unimaginable only a few years ago. A state judge is to say what consequences, if any, the country’s former and soon-to-be leader will face for felonies that a jury found he committed.

With Mr. Trump 10 days from inauguration, Judge Juan M. Merchan has indicated he plans a no-penalty sentence called an unconditional discharge, and prosecutors aren’t opposing it. That would mean no jail time, no probation and no fines would be imposed, but nothing is final until Friday (January 10, 2025)‘s proceeding is done.

Regardless of the outcome, Mr. Trump, a Republican, will become the first person convicted of a felony to assume the presidency.

Mr. Trump, who is expected to appear by video from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, will have the opportunity to speak. He has pilloried the case, the only one of his four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that ever will.

The judge has indicated that he plans the unconditional discharge – a rarity in felony convictions – partly to avoid complicated constitutional issues that would arise if he imposed a penalty that overlapped with Mr. Trump’s presidency.

The hush money case accused Mr. Trump of fudging his business’ records to veil a $130,000 payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels. She was paid, late in Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, not to tell the public about a sexual encounter she maintains the two had a decade earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them, and he contends that his political adversaries spun up a bogus prosecution to try to damage him.