Donald Trump to be sentenced on January 10 in hush money trial as guilty verdict upheld
3 January 2025, 21:05 | Updated: 3 January 2025, 21:34
A judge has ordered US President-elect Donald Trump to be sentenced on January 10 in the New York hush money case.
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A US judge has ordered former president Donald Trump to be sentenced on January 10 in the New York hush money case, upholding his guilty verdict.
The sentencing will take place just over a week before his inauguration on January 20.
Trump is set to take office on January 20 as the first former president to be convicted of a crime and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office.
Trump had previously wanted the judge to throw out the case in light of his presidential election win.
He had argued that going further with the legal proceedings would "threaten the functioning of the federal government”.
President-elect Donald Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts in a New York court on criminal charges involving him paying hush money to a porn star.
Judge Juan Merchan ruled that the case won't be thrown out, after agreeing to postpone the proceedings after Trump's election win.
The judge indicated that Trump isn't likely to be imprisoned.
Justice Merchan, who presided over Trump's trial, signalled in a written decision that he would sentence the former and future president to what is known as a conditional discharge, in which a case gets dismissed if a defendant avoids re-arrest.
Trump was found guilty in May of concealing a hush-money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election.
The former US President had pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts, and denied any sexual encounter with Daniels.
Judge 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 January 20.
"Only by bringing finality to this matter" will the interests of justice be served, Judge Merchan wrote.
The judge said: "While this court as a matter of law must not make any determination on sentencing prior to giving the parties and defendants, opportunity to be heard, it seems proper at this juncture to make known the court's inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration, a sentence authorised by the conviction but one the people concede they no longer view as a practicable recommendation."
Trump was convicted in May of falsifying his business' records to disguise the true nature of a chain of payments that provided 130,000 dollars to pornstar Stormy Daniels.
She received the money through Mr Trump's then-lawyer, in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign.
The payout was meant to keep her quiet about a sexual encounter she says she had with the married Mr Trump a decade earlier.
It was the first ever criminal trial faced by a former or current US president.
Before Trump's November election, his lawyers sought to reverse his conviction using a US Supreme Court decision in July that gave presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.
That request was still pending when the election raised new issues.
While urging Judge Merchan to nix the conviction, Trump also sought to move the case to federal court, where he could also assert immunity.
A federal judge repeatedly said no, but Trump appealed.
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.
