For the last week, President-elect Donald Trump’s defense attorneys submitted hundreds of pages of legal arguments in four courts from New York City to Albany to Washington, D.C., to stop a virtual sentencing where Trump faced no real risk of imprisonment, fine, or probation. His attorneys lost every round in the New York State judiciary and found themselves one justice away from another victory before the United States Supreme Court. And so, Trump and his attorney Todd Blanche appeared this morning in court from Florida via CCTV, framing their camera to include two large American flags in the background. The proceedings took just over half an hour, and Trump used the opportunity to rail against the “political witch hunt.” After cordial remarks without any hint of indignation, Justice Juan Merchan pronounced the expected sentence of unconditional discharge – that is, no criminal penalty whatsoever.
So, why did Trump’s legal team pull every lever available to them to stop these proceedings, and why did prosecutors fight just as tenaciously only to complete the trial record?
The details of today’s proceedings and in particular Merchan’s comments toward the end of sentencing point to an answer.
Despite the “extraordinary breadth of protections” afforded by the office of the presidency, which the U.S. Supreme Court expanded in another Trump case last summer, Merchan declared, “one power they do not provide is the power to erase a jury verdict.”
“Premeditated and Continuous Deception”
On May 30, 2024, a jury unanimously found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an illegal effort to cover up payments to Stormy Daniels from voters before the 2016 presidential election. In the same courtroom today, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass described those charges as Trump’s “conspiracy to promote his own election by unlawful means” and through “premeditated and continuous deception.”
“Instead of preserving, protecting and defending our constitutionally established system of criminal justice, the defendant, the once and future president of the United States, has engaged in a coordinated campaign to undermine its legitimacy,” Steinglass said today during the sentencing hearing. “Far from expressing any kind of remorse for his criminal conduct, the defendant has purposefully bred disdain for our judicial institutions and the rule of law.”
A running theme of the prosecutor’s address was Trump’s “unrelenting” and “unsubstantiated attacks upon this court and his family, individual prosecutors and their families, the witnesses, the grand jury, the trial jury and the justice system as a whole,” a campaign that led Merchan to impose a gag order and find Trump in contempt of it 10 times.
On the day Trump’s sentencing date was set, Merchan denounced his legal team’s rhetoric in an extraordinary footnote, after Blanche accused the judge and prosecutors of knowingly taking “unlawful” actions the previous month. One week ago on Jan. 3, Merchan spelled out the subtext: “Those words, by definition, mean ‘criminally punishable.'” (On Nov. 14, Trump nominated Blanche to serve as the deputy attorney general at his Department of Justice, which includes the responsibility for overseeing its criminal cases. Blanche continued to level his accusations about the judge and prosecutors in Trump’s case in a legal brief on Dec. 3.)
“Collateral Consequences”
Trump’s campaign to delegitimize the system that convicted him has not ended, and both Trump and his attorney used their speaking time to discredit several aspects of the criminal case, including Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, his investigation, the charges, and his gag order. “This has been a very terrible experience,” Trump said at the start of his remarks. “I think it’s been a tremendous setback for New York and the New York court system.” Blanche emphasized that he plans to appeal the verdict. On Thursday, Trump learned that he may have five votes against him at the Supreme Court, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the liberals in rejecting the application to stop the sentencing. (If this five vote majority persists when the Court next hears this case or other important matters adverse to Trump, the short opinion rejecting a stay could be remembered as the start of something significant.) That said, Trump may also calculate that he already has four justices firmly on his side, and needs only one more – since the four dissenters would have taken the extraordinary step of stopping the state court hearing in its tracks, and the majority voted only to wait to decide whether to address the legal arguments after today’s hearing.
In order to grant the stay, Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas had to find a likelihood that Trump would succeed on the merits, and the other justices did not mention the merits at all in rejecting Trump’s application. They simply wrote that Trump’s evidentiary arguments, which hinge upon his immunity claims, can be addressed later on appeal, and that Merchan’s pre-announced sentence meant that a “brief virtual hearing” would not interfere with Trump’s obligations as President-elect.
In his failed argument that today’s short hearing was constitutionally intolerable, Trump’s attorney John Sauer suggested that the president-elect’s felony convictions would carry “collateral consequences” even without any additional penalty.
“In fact, the prospect of imposing sentence on President Trump just before he assumes Office as the 47th President raises the specter of other possible restrictions on liberty, such as travel, reporting requirements, registration, probationary requirements, and others—all of which would be constitutionally intolerable under the doctrine of Presidential immunity,” Sauer wrote to stave off the hearing. “Indeed, every adjudication of a felony conviction results in significant collateral consequences for the defendant, regardless of whether a term of imprisonment is imposed.”
The word “specter” gave away Sauer’s rhetorical move, and with the unconditional discharge formally entered, Trump will experience few tangible consequences of his felony convictions. As CNN reported in June, Trump’s convictions led to the suspension of his concealed carry licence for his firearm, but that was a consequence of his 34 guilty verdicts, not his sentencing. In New York, other convicted felons face restrictions on jury service, professional licensing, public benefits and eligibility for state public offices, which could have been a problem if Trump wanted to be mayor of New York, for example, but it will be no impediment for Trump becoming Commander in Chief. Trump’s professional licensing was already in peril — from his civil fraud verdict, which resulted in the President-elect being barred from leading any New York companies for three years. Over the course of Trump’s presidency, that’s a moot point.
Trump and his lawyer did not mention any of these potential inconveniences once during their remarks.
“Truly Extraordinary”
In the end, the prosecution indicated that the sentence represented an affirmation of everything that led to that point, including the work of the jurors and indeed of the justice system itself.
“Sentencing this defendant permits this court to enter judgment to cement the defendant’s status as a convicted felon, while he pursues whatever appeals he intends to pursue, and it gives full effect and respect to the jury’s verdict while preserving the defendant’s ability to govern,” Steinglass said.
During his address, Merchan described People v. Trump as a “truly extraordinary” but ultimately mundane case.
“There was unprecedented media attention, public interest, and heightened security involving various agencies, and yet, the trial was a bit of a paradox because once the courtroom doors were closed, the trial itself was no more special, unique, or extraordinary than the other 32 criminal trials that took place in this courthouse at the same exact time,” Merchan said. “Jury selection was conducted. The same rules of evidence were followed. Opening statements were made, witnesses called and cross-examined, evidence presented, the same burden of proof was applied, and a jury made up of ordinary citizens delivered a verdict.”
Merchan began his address immediately after Trump delivered a speech with a litany of complaints about the proceedings. The judge responded to them by saying, simply: “Thank you, Mr. Trump.” At the end of his remarks, Merchan ended with well-wishes for the defendant: “Sir, I wish you godspeed as you assume your second term in office,” he said.
From the unusual deference to the defendant on the screen, and the non-jail sentence, it might have seemed that Trump had won the day, though the existence of the proceedings — and the events that led up to it since Trump’s indictment in April 2023 — stood as a testament of his defeat before the jury. After Merchan’s final remarks, the court cut off the feed, allowing Trump to prepare his inauguration in just 10 days. In a rare decision, Merchan released an audio recording from that day’s hearing in People v. Trump — for now, giving himself the last word.