NEW YORK: President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced Friday to no punishment in his historic hush money case, a judgment that lets him return to the White House unencumbered by the threat of a jail term or a fine.
With Trump appearing by video from his Florida estate, the sentence quietly capped an extraordinary trial rife with moments unthinkable in the US only a few years ago.
It was the first criminal prosecution and first conviction of a former US president and major presidential candidate. The New York case became the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that ever will. And the sentencing came 10 days before his inauguration for his second term.
In roughly six minutes of remarks to the court, a calm but insistent Trump called the case “a weaponization of government” and “an embarrassment to New York.” He maintained that he did not commit any crime.
“It’s been a political witch hunt. It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election, and, obviously, that didn’t work,” the Republican president-elect said by video, with US flags in the background. Beside him at his Mar-a-Lago property was defense lawyer Todd Blanche, whom Trump has tapped to serve as the second-highest ranking Justice Department official in his incoming administration.
After the roughly half-hour proceeding, Trump said in a post on his social media network that the hearing had been a “despicable charade.” He reiterated that he would appeal his conviction.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan could have sentenced the 78-year-old to up to four years in prison. Instead, Merchan chose a sentence that sidestepped thorny constitutional issues by effectively ending the case but assured that Trump will become the first president to take office with a felony conviction on his record.
Trump’s no-penalty sentence, called an unconditional discharge, is rare for felony convictions. The judge said that he had to respect Trump’s upcoming legal protections as president, while also giving due consideration to the jury’s decision.
“Despite the extraordinary breadth of those protections, one power they do not provide is the power to erase a jury verdict,” said Merchan, who had indicated ahead of time that he planned the no-penalty sentence.
As Merchan pronounced the sentence, Trump sat upright, lips pursed, frowning slightly. He tilted his head to the side as the judge wished him “godspeed in your second term in office.”
Before the hearing, a handful of Trump supporters and critics gathered outside. One group held a banner that read, “Trump is guilty.” The other held one that said, “Stop partisan conspiracy” and “Stop political witch hunt.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the charges, is a Democrat.
The norm-smashing case saw the former and incoming president charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, put on trial for almost two months and convicted by a jury on every count. Yet the legal detour — and sordid details aired in court of a plot to bury affair allegations — didn’t hurt him with voters, who elected him in November to a second term.
“The American voters got a chance to see and decide for themselves whether this was the kind of case that should’ve been brought. And they decided,” Blanche said Friday.
Prosecutors said that they supported a no-penalty sentence, but they chided Trump’s attacks on the legal system throughout the case.
“The once and future president of the United States has engaged in a coordinated campaign to undermine its legitimacy,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said.
Afterward, Trump was expected to return to the business of planning for his new administration. He was set later Friday to host conservative House Republicans as they gathered to discuss GOP priorities.
The specific charges in the hush money case were about checks and ledgers. But the underlying accusations were seamy and deeply entangled with Trump’s political rise.
Trump was charged with fudging his business’ records to veil a $130,000 payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels. She was paid, late in Trump’s 2016 campaign, not to tell the public about a sexual encounter she maintains the two had a decade earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them and that he did nothing wrong.
Prosecutors said Daniels was paid off — through Trump’s personal attorney at the time, Michael Cohen — as part of a wider effort to keep voters from hearing about Trump’s alleged extramarital escapades.
Trump denies the alleged encounters occurred. His lawyers said he wanted to squelch the stories to protect his family, not his campaign. And while prosecutors said Cohen’s reimbursements for paying Daniels were deceptively logged as legal expenses, Trump says that’s simply what they were.
Trump’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to forestall a trial, and later to get the conviction overturned, the case dismissed or at least the sentencing postponed.
Trump attorneys have leaned heavily into assertions of presidential immunity from prosecution, and they got a boost in July from a Supreme Court decision that affords former commanders-in-chief considerable immunity.
Trump was a private citizen and presidential candidate when Daniels was paid in 2016. He was president when the reimbursements to Cohen were made and recorded the following year.
Merchan, a Democrat, repeatedly postponed the sentencing, initially set for July. But last week, he set Friday’s date, citing a need for “finality.”
Trump’s lawyers then launched a flurry of last-minute efforts to block the sentencing. Their last hope vanished Thursday night with a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that declined to delay the sentencing.
Meanwhile, the other criminal cases that once loomed over Trump have ended or stalled ahead of trial.
After Trump’s election, special counsel Jack Smith closed out the federal prosecutions over Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. A state-level Georgia election interference case is locked in uncertainty after prosecutorFaniWillis was removed from it.

CARACAS: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose nearly 12 years in office have been marked by deep economic and social crisis, was sworn in for a third term on Friday, despite a six-month-long election dispute, international calls for him to stand aside and an increase in the US reward offered for his capture.
Maduro, president since 2013, was declared the winner of July’s election by both Venezuela’s electoral authority and top court, though detailed tallies confirming his victory have never been published.
Venezuela’s opposition says ballot box-level tallies show a landslide win for its former candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who is recognized as president-elect by several countries including the United States. International election observers said the vote was not democratic.
The months since the election have seen Gonzalez’s flight to Spain in September, his ally Maria Corina Machado going into hiding in Venezuela, and the detentions of high-profile opposition figures and protesters.
In the latest in a series of punitive steps, the outgoing Biden administration increased its reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Maduro on drug trafficking charges to $25 million, from a previous $15 million.
It also issued a $25 million reward for Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and a $15 million reward for Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, as well as new sanctions against eight other officials including the head of state oil company PDVSA Hector Obregon.
The US indicted Maduro and others on narcotics and corruption charges, among others, in 2020. Maduro has rejected the accusations.
The US move coincided with sanctions by Britain and the European Union each targeting 15 officials, including members of the National Electoral Council and the security forces, and Canadian sanctions targeting 14 current and former officials.
The Maduro government has always rejected all sanctions, saying they are illegitimate measures that amount to an “economic war” designed to cripple Venezuela.
“The outgoing government of the United States doesn’t know how to take revenge on us,” Maduro said during his inauguration speech, without directly mentioning sanctions.
The Venezuelan communications ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the sanctions.
Maduro and his allies have cheered what they say is the country’s resilience despite the measures, though they have historically blamed some economic hardships and shortages on sanctions.

OPPOSITION TO SPEAK
Gonzalez, who has been on a whistle-stop tour of the Americas this week, has said he will return to Venezuela to take up the mantle of president, but has given no details.
The government, which has accused the opposition of fomenting fascist plots against it, has said Gonzalez will be arrested if he returns and offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to his capture.
Opposition leaders Gonzalez and Machado are each expected to speak later on Friday.
Both are being investigated by the attorney general’s office for alleged conspiracy, but only Gonzalez has a public warrant out for his arrest.
Machado’s first public appearance since August at an anti-government march in Caracas on Thursday was marred by a brief detention.
Her Vente Venezuela political movement said guns were fired and Machado was knocked off the motorcycle on which she was leaving the event. She was then held and forced to film several videos, it said.
One video shared on social media and by government officials showed her sitting on a curb and recounting losing her wallet.
The government scoffed at the incident and denied any involvement.
Some 42 people have been detained for political reasons since Tuesday, judicial NGO Foro Penal said.
Maduro was sworn in at the national assembly in Caracas and said he was taking his oath in the name of sixteenth-century Indigenous leader Guaicaipuro and late President Hugo Chavez, his mentor, among others.
“May this new presidential term be a period of peace, of prosperity, of equality and the new democracy,” Maduro said, adding he would convene a commission dedicated to constitutional reform.
“This act is possible because Venezuela is peaceful, in full exercise of its national sovereignty, of its popular sovereignty, of its national independence,” Maduro said.
Some 2,000 invitees from 125 countries attended the inauguration, according to the government.
Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel and Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, staunch allies of Maduro, attended as did Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament.
ECONOMIC TROUBLES
Venezuela closed its borders and airspace to Colombia for 72 hours starting at 0500 local time (1000 GMT), the foreign ministry in Bogota said in a statement, adding the border on the Colombian side would remain open.
The opposition, non-governmental organizations and international bodies such as the United Nations have for years decried increasing repression of opposition political parties, activists and independent media in Venezuela.
US President-elect Donald Trump has said the country is being run by a dictator.
Meanwhile the government has repeatedly accused the opposition of plotting with foreign governments and agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency to commit acts of sabotage and terrorism.
The government said this week it had detained seven “mercenaries,” including a high-ranking FBI official and a US military official.
Venezuela’s economy has experienced a prolonged crisis marked by triple-digit inflation and the exodus of more than 7 million migrants seeking better opportunities abroad.
Many of Machado’s supporters, among them retired Venezuelans who would like to see their children and grandchildren return to the country, say jobs, inflation and unreliable public services are among their top concerns.
The government, meanwhile, has employed orthodox methods to try to tamp down inflation, to some success. Maduro said this month that the economy grew 9 percent last year.
About 2,000 people were arrested at protests following the election. The government said this week it has released 1,515 of them. Gonzalez, 75, said his son-in-law was kidnapped on Tuesday while taking his children to school.