New York: Donald Trump is scheduled to take charge of his second term as American President on January 20.
But 10 days before that, the President-elect will be sentenced in the hush money case.
New York judge Juan Merchan, who heard Trump’s hush money case, set January 10 as the date of sentencing, reported AFP.
Trump, the first former President to be ever convicted of a crime, can appear either in person or virtually at his sentencing next week.
However, judge Merchan said he was not inclined to impose jail time.
Merchan upheld the 78-year-old Trump’s conviction by a New York jury, rejecting multiple pleas by Trump’s lawyers to have it thrown out.
Instead of incarceration, the judge said he was leaning towards an unconditional discharge.
“It seems proper at this juncture to make known the Court’s inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration,’ Merchan said. He remarked that the prosecutors also did not believe a jail term was a “practicable recommendation.”
Nevertheless, the sentence would mean that Trump will be entering the White House as a convicted felon.
Trump will most likely lodge an appeal that could delay his sentencing.
Denouncing the proposed sentencing, Trump called it a ‘rigged charade’.
“This illegitimate political attack is nothing but a rigged charade,” he wrote on his platform Truth Social, describing Merchan as a “radical partisan.”
“The order was knowingly unlawful, goes against our Constitution and, if allowed to stand, would be the end of the Presidency as we know it,” Merchan added.
Trump was convicted in in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 US election so that she won’t reveal an alleged sexual encounter in 2006.
Trump faces up to four years in prison, but even before he won the November election, legal experts were of the view that Merchan won’t send the former President to jail.
