Trump will be sentenced Jan. 10 in New York case, days before his inauguration
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President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 10 in New York, 10 days before he is sworn in to be president of the United States.
In a decision Friday, New York Judge Juan Merchan noted that his inclination was to not impose a sentence of incarceration. In the filing, Merchan noted that if a sentence was unable to be given before Trump took the oath of office, the only other viable option may be to postpone proceedings until after Trump's presidential term is over.
In May, Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, officially labeling him a convicted felon. The decision also comes after Merchan ruled last month that Trump is not immune from a conviction in the case.
Proceedings had been indefinitely stayed in order for Trump's legal team to argue that the case be dismissed.
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In a statement, the Trump-Vance transition team called the order a "witch hunt."
"There should be no sentencing, and President Trump will continue fighting against these hoaxes until they are all dead," Steven Cheung, Trump's spokesman, said.
Trump’s New York criminal charges were the only to go to trial
After about a day and a half of deliberations, 12 New York jurors said last May that they unanimously agreed that Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels to influence the 2016 election.
Following the verdict, Trump virtually completed a routine pre-sentencing interview with the New York City Department of Probation. The prosecutors for the Manhattan District Attorney's office, who prosecuted Trump, and Trump's legal teams each submitted sentencing recommendations last month. Those documents have not been released to the public.
Trump also turned his attention to mobilizing donations for his campaign and mounting legal fees by using the conviction as a fundraising tool. Within 24 hours of the guilty verdict, Trump's campaign boasted raising millions of dollars. Trump and his legal team have also vowed to appeal the conviction, a process that could take years.
The jury heard from 22 witnesses during about four weeks of testimony in Manhattan's criminal court. Jurors also weighed other evidence — mostly documents like phone records, invoices and checks to Michael Cohen, Trump's once loyal "fixer," who paid Daniels to keep her story of an alleged affair with the former president quiet.
The facts of the payments and invoices labeled as legal services were not in dispute. What prosecutors needed to prove was that Trump falsified the records in order to further another crime — in this case, violating the New York election law that makes it a crime for "any two or more persons [to] conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means." The jurors were able to choose whether those unlawful means were violating the Federal Election Campaign Act, falsifying tax returns or falsifying other business records.
The verdict came more than a year after a grand jury indicted Trump on March 30, 2023, marking the first time a former or sitting president faced criminal charges.
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