In The News 10 January 2025

Trump lashes out after sentencing in hush money case, vows to appeal

By Brett Rowland
The Center Square

President-elect Donald Trump lashed out at Democrats and the New York judge who sentenced him to an unconditional discharge, meaning he won't go to jail, before taking office on Jan. 20. He said he will appeal the sentence.

"The Radical Democrats have lost another pathetic, unAmerican Witch Hunt," Trump wrote on Truth Social after his sentencing Friday morning in New York. "After spending tens of millions of dollars, wasting over 6 years of obsessive work that should have been spent on protecting New Yorkers from violent, rampant crime that is destroying the City and State, coordinating with the Biden/Harris Department of Injustice in lawless Weaponization, and bringing completely baseless, illegal, and fake charges against your 45th and 47th President, ME, I was given an UNCONDITIONAL DISCHARGE."

Trump said he never did anything wrong and the entire prosecution was a scam. 

"That result alone proves that, as all Legal Scholars and Experts have said, THERE IS NO CASE, THERE WAS NEVER A CASE, and this whole Scam fully deserves to be DISMISSED," the president-elect wrote. "The real Jury, the American People, have spoken, by Re-Electing me with an overwhelming MANDATE in one of the most consequential Elections in History."

In May 2024, a Manhattan jury convicted Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records for disguising hush money payments to an adult film actress as legal costs ahead of the 2016 election.

Judge Juan Merchan handed down the sentence on Friday after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene on Trump's behalf. 

"As the American People have seen, this 'case' had no crime, no damages, no proof, no facts, no Law, only a highly conflicted Judge, a star witness who is a disbarred, disgraced, serial perjurer, and criminal Election Interference," Trump said in a reference to his former attorney, Michael Cohen, who turned on Trump and testified against him in court. "Today’s event was a despicable charade, and now that it is over, we will appeal this Hoax, which has no merit, and restore the trust of Americans in our once great System of Justice. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

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