A judge has ordered US president-elect Donald Trump to be sentenced next week in his New York hush money case – but has suggested he will not jail him.
In a surprise move, Trump‘s sentencing in the case has been set for 10 January – a little over a week before his inauguration on 20 January.
Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial, signalled in a written decision that he would sentence the former and future president to what is known as a conditional discharge, in which a case gets dismissed if a defendant avoids re-arrest.
The development still puts him course to be the first president to take office convicted of felony crimes.
Trump was found guilty in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records, relating to an alleged scheme to hide a hush money payment to adult actress Stormy Daniels in the last weeks of his first campaign in 2016.
Following the election in November, he had pushed to dismiss the verdict and throw out the case on presidential immunity grounds due to his impending return to the White House.
Judge Merchan rejected this argument, saying he found “no legal impediment to sentencing” and that it was “incumbent” on him to do so prior to the inauguration.
However, the judge said: “While this court as a matter of law must not make any determination on sentencing prior to giving the parties and defendants, opportunity to be heard, it seems proper at this juncture to make known the court’s inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration, a sentence authorised by the conviction but one the people concede they no longer view as a practicable recommendation.”
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