Updated:2025-01-13 03:56 Views:60
US President-elect Donald Trump Photo: AP US President-elect Donald Trump Photo: AP In an unprecedented turn of events on Friday, US President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced to 'unconditional discharge' in his hush-money case which allows the president-elect to be released without jail, fine or probation supervision.
In legal terms, an unconditional discharge is a sentence imposed 'without imprisonment, fine or probation supervision' and the case eventually gets dismissed if a defendant avoids re-arrest.
The development came right ahead of his return to the White House this month.
Regardless of the fact that Judge Juan M Merchan, who presided over Trump's trial, earlier mentioned in a written decision that he'd sentence the president-elect to an unconditional discharge, Trump, a Republican, anyway became the first person convicted of a felony to assume the presidency.
Trump, who appeared virtually from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida said his criminal trial and conviction has been a "very terrible experience” and insisted he committed no crime.
“It's been a political witch hunt. It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election, and obviously, that didn't work," Trump said while terming the case "a weaponisation of government" and "an embarrassment to New York".
About the Hush Money caseFormer US President Donald Trump has been under investigation over the payment of alleged hush money to adult film actor Stormy Daniels.
Daniels has in the past alleged that she and Trump had an affair around a decade ago and that she was paid $130,000 to stay quiet about it in 2016. While such hush money is not illegal and is not under investigation, the process of the payment is under investigation.
It's alleged that Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen paid the hush money to Daniels and was later reimbursed by a Trump business entity. It's the irregularity in this reimbursement that's under investigation that began when Trump was still in White House.
"At issue in the investigation is the payment made to Daniels and the Trump Organization's reimbursement to Cohen. According to court filings in Cohen's own federal prosecution, Trump Org executives authorised payments to him totaling $420,000 to cover his original $130,000 payment and tax liabilities and reward him with a bonus", CNN reported earlier.
It's the falsification of business records over the transactions that is under investigation, notes CNN.
What did Trump say?Denying all the alleged encounters, Trump said, “There was nothing else it could have been called” while adding “I was hiding nothing.”
online casino free bonus"I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made-up charge," the Republican president-elect wrote on his Truth Social platform last week.
His lawyers said he wanted to squelch the stories to protect his family, not his campaign. And while prosecutors said Cohen's reimbursements for paying Daniels were deceptively logged as legal expenses, Trump says that's simply what they were.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the charges, is a Democrat. Bragg's office said in a court filing Monday that Trump committed “serious offenses that caused extensive harm to the sanctity of the electoral process and to the integrity of New York's financial marketplace.”
The five bodies, found on Friday afternoon, did not have any injury marks. Howevershowtime, the daughters had a red thread tied around their waists and necks.