Jordan Rubin is off today and will return next week. This week's Deadline: Legal Newsletter is by Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson.
Welcome, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. Hemmed in by the reality that the man before him was the future president of the United States, New York state Judge Juan Merchan handed down a sentence essentially amounting to no punishment at all.
A jury unanimously found that President-elect Donald Trump violated New York criminal law by falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment that his former attorney made to adult film star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump will now be the first president to enter the White House having been convicted of a felony.
By the time he appeared virtually in Merchan's courtroom Friday morning, Trump knew full well that he would face no real penalty for his conviction. The judge was well-aware that we bubble-wrap presidents and protect them from legal proceedings and sentences that could undermine their ability to do their jobs.
This spared Trump from having to do what virtually any other defendant would do: plead for a light sentence based on mitigating factors. Instead, Trump recycled some of his greatest hits about the case, arguing that he "did nothing wrong" and that the charges amounted to "a political witch hunt."
While a conviction based on nonviolent felonies would not necessarily lead to prison time in a typical case, Merchan laid out the aggravating factors that could have led to a prison sentence here. He wrote that Trump "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."
In his closing statements before the court, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass argued that Trump "has caused enduring damage to the public perception of the criminal justice system." Whether that is true is up to us.
Today's sentence was about protecting the office of the presidency, not the person who will occupy it, and there may be other attempts to hold Trump accountable in the future. It remains to be seen what will happen then.
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