Trump gets unconditional discharge for business fraud conviction

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday received a sentence of no fine, probation, or jail time after a Manhattan jury convicted him on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan’s chosen sentence of an unconditional discharge ends the criminal proceedings against Trump.  New York state law allows judges to impose an unconditional discharge in situations when they believe imposing any condition as part of a sentence would not serve any appropriate purpose.

In a social media statement Friday,  Trump said the sentence showed that prosecutors did not ever have a case against him in the first place. He accused them of wasting six years of obsessive work on prosecuting him—time that they should have spent trying to protect New Yorkers from violent crime, he said.

So what happened at the hearing? Trump appeared at the sentencing virtually on Friday morning. Merchan, who was the trial judge for the case, also oversaw the sentencing. When he first scheduled the sentencing hearing for Friday, Merchan indicated that he would not incarcerate Trump. Prosecutors also were not pushing for Trump to serve jail time, Merchan added. 

After issuing Trump his sentence, Merchan wished him godspeed in his second term in the White House, the Associated Press reported.

Trump has insisted he did nothing wrong and described the prosecution against him as being politically motivated. He has also asked for a dismissal of the indictment and the jury verdict against him. He also had fought to have his sentencing hearing delayed—even going so far as to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to delay it. The high court denied his request.