NEW YORK: Donald Trump must be sentenced on Jan. 10 in the criminal case in which he was convicted on charges involving hush money paid to a porn star, a judge ruled on Friday, adding that he is not inclined to impose a jail sentence.
Justice Juan Merchan said he denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the case due to his presidential election victory. The judge said the Republican president-elect may appear for the sentencing, which will take place just 10 days before his inauguration, either in-person or virtually.
Merchan wrote that a sentence of “unconditional discharge” — meaning no custody, monetary fine, or probation — would be “the most viable solution.”
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Trump’s second motion to dismiss the case filed since his May conviction, his defense lawyers argued that having the case hang over him during his presidency would impede his ability to govern.
Merchan rejected that argument, writing that setting aside the jury’s verdict would “undermine the Rule of Law in immeasurable ways.”
“Defendant’s status as President-elect does not require the drastic and ‘rare’ application of (the court’s) authority to grant the (dismissal) motion,” Merchan wrote in the decision.
Trump was initially scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 26, but Merchan pushed that back indefinitely after Trump defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election.
Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which brought the case, said there were measures short of the “extreme remedy” of overturning the jury’s verdict that could assuage Trump’s concerns about being distracted by a criminal case while serving as president.
They suggested several options for Merchan, including delaying the sentencing until Trump, 78, leaves the White House in 2029, or guaranteeing a sentence that would not involve prison time.
The prosecutors also said the judge could simply terminate the case with a notation that Trump was never sentenced and that his conviction was neither affirmed nor reversed on appeal. They said a similar approach was used in cases where a defendant dies after being convicted but before being sentenced.
The case stemmed from a $130,000 payment that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. The payment was for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she has said she had a decade earlier with Trump, who denies it.
A Manhattan jury in May found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the payment. It was the first time a US president — former or sitting — had been convicted of or charged with a criminal offense.
Trump pleaded not guilty and called the case an attempt by Bragg, a Democrat, to harm his 2024 campaign.
Trump on Dec. 16 lost a separate bid to toss the conviction in light of the US Supreme Court’s July 1 decision that presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted over their official actions, and that evidence of their official actions cannot be presented in criminal cases over personal conduct.
In denying Trump’s motion to dismiss, Merchan said the prosecution over “decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch.”
Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years in prison, but incarceration is not required. Before his election victory, legal experts said it was unlikely Trump would be locked up due to his lack of a criminal history and advanced age.
Trump was charged in three other state and federal criminal cases in 2023: one involving classified documents he kept after leaving office and two others involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
He pleaded not guilty in all three cases. The Justice Department moved to dismiss the two federal cases after Trump’s election victory.
Trump’s state criminal case in Georgia over charges stemming from his effort to overturn his 2020 election loss in that state is in limbo.

NEW DELHI: India’s foreign ministry said on Friday that New Delhi has conveyed its concerns to Beijing about China’s plan to build a hydropower dam in Tibet on the Yarlung Zangbo river which flows into India.
Chinese officials say that hydropower projects in Tibet will not have a major impact on the environment or on downstream water supplies but India and Bangladesh have nevertheless raised concerns about the dam.
The Yarlung Zangbo becomes the Brahmaputra river as it leaves Tibet and flows south into India’s Arunachal Pradesh and Assam states and finally into Bangladesh.
“The Chinese side has been urged to ensure that the interests of downstream states of the Brahmaputra are not harmed by activities in upstream areas,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told a weekly media briefing.
“We will continue to monitor and take necessary measures to protect our interests,” he said.

The construction of the dam, which will be the largest of its kind in the world with an estimated capacity of 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, was approved last month.
Jaiswal said that New Delhi had also lodged a “solemn protest” with Beijing against its creation of two new counties — one of which includes a disputed area also claimed by India — last month.
“Creation of new counties will neither have a bearing on India’s longstanding and consistent position regarding our sovereignty over the area nor lend legitimacy to China’s illegal and forcible occupation of the same,” he said.
Relations between Asian giants India and China, that were strained after a deadly military clash on their disputed border in 2020, have been on the mend since they reached
an agreement in October to pull back troops from their last two stand-off points in the western Himalayas.
The two armies have stepped back following the agreement and senior officials held formal talks for the first time in five years last month where they agreed to take small steps to improve relations.