Trump to be sentenced in hush money case, days before his inauguration

US President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday for his criminal conviction stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, a case that for a time overshadowed his bid to retake the White House.

The US Supreme Court paved the way on Thursday for the 9.30am sentencing in New York state court in Manhattan, rejecting a last-minute request by Trump to halt it 10 days before his January 20 inauguration.

Justice Juan Merchan, who oversaw the six-week trial last year, has signaled he does not plan to send Trump to jail or to fine him. But by granting an unconditional discharge, he would place a judgment of guilt on Trump's permanent record.

Trump, 78, who pleaded not guilty, was expected to appear virtually at the hearing.

He fought tooth and nail to avoid the spectacle of being compelled to appear before a state-level judge days before returning to the public office he lost four years ago.

"He doesn't want to be sentenced because that is the official judgment of him being a convicted felon," said Cheryl Bader, a law professor at Fordham University in New York.

The trial played out against the extraordinary backdrop of Trump's successful campaign to retake the White House. The sentencing marks the culmination of the first-ever criminal case brought against a US president, past or present.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, charged Trump, a Republican, in March 2023 with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up his former lawyer Michael Cohen's $130,000 (R2.4m) payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump, who denied it.

Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in that election.

The Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of all 34 counts on May 30. Prosecutors argued that despite the tawdry nature of the allegations, the case was an attempt to corrupt the 2016 election.

Critics of the businessman-turned politician cited the charges and other legal entanglements he faced to bolster their contention that he was unfit for public office.

Trump flipped the script. He argued the case - along with three other criminal indictments and civil lawsuits accusing him of fraud, defamation and sexual abuse - was an effort by opponents to weaponise the justice system against him and harm his reelection campaign.

He frequently lashed out at prosecutors and witnesses, and Merchan ultimately fined Trump $10,000 (R189 573,50) for violating a gag order.

As recently as January 3, Trump called the judge a "radical partisan" in a post on his Truth Social platform.

In a decision that day, Merchan said that setting aside the verdict would "undermine the Rule of Law in immeasurable ways" and wrote that Trump's behavior during the trial showed disrespect for the judiciary.

"Defendant has gone to great lengths to broadcast on social media and other forums his lack of respect for judges, juries, grand juries and the justice system as a whole," Merchan said.

Late on Thursday, hours before sentence was to be imposed, Trump wrote on his social media platform that he would be appealing the case and was confident that he would prevail.

A POLITICAL MIXED BAG

The hush money case was widely viewed as less serious than the three other criminal cases Trump faced, in which he was accused of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss and retaining classified documents after leaving the White House. Trump pleaded not guilty in all the cases.

But Bragg's case was the only criminal case to reach trial in the face of an onslaught of challenges from Trump's lawyers. After Trump's Nov. 5 election victory, federal prosecutors backed off their two cases due to Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

The remaining state case, brought in Georgia over efforts to reverse the 2020 election results in that state, is in limbo after a court in December disqualified the lead prosecutor on the case.

The hush money case was a mixed bag politically. Contributions to Trump's campaign surged after he was indicted in March 2023, likely helping him vanquish his rivals for the Republican nomination. During the trial, polling showed a majority of voters took the charges seriously, and his standing among Republicans slipped after the guilty verdict.

But the case quickly faded from the headlines, especially after President Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance led him to drop out with Vice President Kamala Harris replacing him on the Democratic ticket, and after a gunman's bullet came inches from killing Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Merchan initially scheduled the sentencing for July 11, but pushed it back multiple times at Trump's request. In agreeing in September to defer the sentencing until after the election, the judge wrote that he was wary of being perceived as placing his thumb on the scales.

Falsification of business records is punishable by up to four years in prison. While Trump would have been unlikely to get jail time due to his advanced age and lack of a criminal history, legal experts said it was not impossible, especially given his gag order violations.

Trump's victory and looming inauguration made a sentence of jail or probation even less practical.

Reuters