First of all, while I respect the rights of adult sex workers I don't endorse any specifically for Report readers. Whatever gender you identify with, I think hitting the sheets should remain a sport for amateurs.
I also categorically deny that we had scheduled a Stormy Daniels film festival. I prefer Sundance.
Judge says Trump won’t face jail, fine in ‘hush money’ case as he schedules sentencing for 10 days before inauguration
By Ben Kochman and Kyle Schnitzer, NY Post
Published Jan. 3, 2025, 4:12 p.m. ET
Donald Trump’s bid to toss his “hush money” case was denied Friday by a Manhattan judge — who set the president-elect’s sentencing for 10 days before the inauguration but indicated he wouldn’t be jailed.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan wrote in the highly anticipated decision that he was inclined to sentence Trump to “unconditional discharge” — meaning no imprisonment, fines or probation supervision.
But it means Trump, 78, will likely be the first president convicted of felony crimes when he takes office on Jan. 20.
Merchan kept intact the jury verdict finding Trump guilty on 34 felonies for concealing a payoff that hid a sex scandal before the 2016 presidential election.
President-Elect Donald Trump meeting with Prince William in Paris ahead of the Notre-Dame reopening ceremony
He didn’t buy the argument by Trump’s attorneys that the conviction should be overturned based on July’s US Supreme Court ruling immunizing a president for “official acts” taken in office.
Merchan said in his ruling that immunity from criminal process for a sitting president does not extend to a president-elect, and does not require that the verdict be tossed — something he described as “drastic” and “rare.”
The judge said Trump could appear either in person or virtually for the sentencing, which he set for Jan. 10 — noting it was in the public’s best interest to bring closure to the case before Inauguration Day.
“Finding no legal impediment to sentencing and recognizing that Presidential immunity will likely attach once Defendant takes his Oath of Office, it is incumbent upon this Court to set this matter down for the imposition of sentence prior to January 20, 2025,” the 18-page filing reads.
“Only by bringing finality to this matter” will the interest of justice be served, he wrote.
Merchan also noted that while Trump could have faced up to four years behind bars on each of the counts, “a sentence of an unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality” and allow Trump to pursue his appeal options.
Following the Nov. 5 election, Merchan had indefinitely postponed Trump’s sentencing to hear arguments from both sides about how the case should proceed.
Trump’s lawyers had claimed that Merchan failing to throw out the jury’s verdict would unconstitutionally interfere with the president-elect preparing to serve a second term.
They also argued the trial was irreparably “tainted” by evidence jurors heard from Trump’s first White House term, acts that should fall under presidential immunity.
Prosecutors fired back that the Supreme Court’s bombshell ruling should not apply because covering up a porn star payoff from the Oval Office did not qualify as one of a president’s “official acts.”
But Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which brought the case, suggested several options, including pausing the case until after Trump’s second term or guarantying that he not be sentenced to jail.
Bragg’s office did not comment on the ruling. Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche didn’t return a request for comment.
But in an interview with Fox News Digital, Trump said Democrats “just want to see if they can get a pound of flesh because every case has failed.”
“I did absolutely nothing wrong,” he said. “This is a political witch hunt by [President] Biden and the DOJ.”
Merchan’s decision followed a legal saga that reached its boiling point with Trump being diverted from his presidential campaign to sit at a courtroom defense table listening to salacious testimony from ex-porn star Stormy Daniels and his former fixer Michael Cohen.
The prosecution centered on allegations that Trump covered up a $130,000 payout from Cohen to Daniels meant to silence her story about having sex in 2006 with the married real-estate mogul.
Jurors saw 11 invoices, 12 digital ledger entries and 11 checks to Cohen — most of which were signed by Trump — that showed the Trump Organization disguising Cohen’s repayments as phony legal services.
Bragg, an elected Democrat, used an unusual and dense legal theory — giving critics room to attack the case as a selective prosecution of the then-frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination.
The theory of the case was that Trump’s crimes were multi-layered.
First, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor — but doing it to cover up another crime is a felony. That crime, prosecutors said, was that the payoff was part of an illegal scheme to hide sex scandals from voters before the 2016 presidential election, where Trump ended up defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Jurors saw evidence that Trump worked with Cohen and the National Enquirer magazine to buy up the rights to and bury damaging information about him, like Daniels’ tale about a brief tryst, and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal’s tale of a months-long affair with Trump.
“What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Trump told Cohen in a secretly made recording, appearing to reference a $150,000 payoff to McDougal.
Adult film actress Stormy Daniels in a pink suit exiting the United States District Court Southern District of New York after a hearing related to Michael Cohen, April 16, 2018
Bragg’s office claimed that the “catch and kill” payouts breached an obscure New York election law barring “conspiring to promote or prevent someone’s election through ‘unlawful means.'”
Merchan gave jurors three options for what “unlawful means” then underpinned the election fraud, including that the Daniels payment exceeded a $2,700 federal cap on campaign contribution limits.
But the court did not require jurors to select a specific unlawful means on the verdict sheet — a confusing move that gave the case’s critics fuel to claim, falsely, that jurors did not “unanimously” convict Trump.
Throughout it all, Trump repeated his mantra that the trial was a “witch hunt” orchestrated by Democrats, and proclaimed without providing hard evidence that the trial was “rigged” against him.
Merchan, who has insisted that politics have nothing to do with his rulings, donated $35 to Democrat causes in 2020, including $15 to President Biden, records show.
Trump spent the six-week trial trashing the proceedings in daily addresses in the courthouse hallway, and repeatedly violating the judge’s limited gag order by slamming witnesses and the jury.
“The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people,” he proclaimed in May, moments after Manhattan jurors convicted him on the 34 falsifying business records counts.
Americans consistently told pollsters that the case’s outcome would not affect their vote.
In fact, Bragg’s case arguably helped propel Trump to victory. His campaign said that it generated a “record-shattering” $34.8 million in small dollar donations in the hours after the guilty verdict.
Months later, Trump won a second presidential term in an an Electoral College landslide over Vice President Kamala Harris.
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