With Trump 10 days from inauguration, Judge Juan M. Merchan (pictured above) has indicated he plans a no-penalty sentence called an unconditional discharge. 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 Trump’s presidency.
But nothing is final until Friday’s proceeding is done. Trump will have an opportunity to speak. The president-elect denies any wrongdoing and claims his political adversaries spun up bogus charges against him.
“I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made up charge,” the Republican president-elect wrote on his Truth Social platform last week. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the charges, is a Democrat.
Bragg's office said in a court filing Monday that Trump committed “serious offenses that caused extensive harm to the sanctity of the electoral process and to the integrity of New York’s financial marketplace.”
Trump's lawyers tried unsuccessfully to forestall a trial. Since his May conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records, they have tried repeatedly through various legal maneuvers to get the conviction overturned, the case dismissed or at least the sentencing postponed.
