NY Judge’s ruling shows how legal issues will follow Trump into office

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares for his inauguration, some of the legal cases that spilled out of Trump’s first presidency will follow him into the second.

Trump has signaled he plans to fight to postpone the scheduled sentencing for his criminal conviction, set by Justice Juan M. Merchan of the New York Supreme Court for Friday. In social media posts this past weekend, Trump railed against Merchan, saying the justice should be disbarred.

Merchan made clear that even if the sentencing were to go forward, he would not recommend any kind of prison sentence or home confinement. In announcing the sentencing date, the judge signaled he planned to give Trump an unconditional discharge in the case, allowing him to walk free but leaving him with a criminal record.

In May, Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with a 2016 election-year hush-money payment to a porn actor who said she had a sexual liaison with him.

But even absent any real penalties, the jury verdict is its own form of punishment for Trump, a measure of accountability that he remains eager to erase. An unconditional discharge — absent a higher court ruling throwing out the jury verdict — would still formally mark Trump as a felon, the first president to carry that status into office.

Asked about the cases continuing on during the presidency, Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, said in a statement that the public had given Trump a “mandate” that “demands an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and all of the witch hunts across the board.”

In setting the sentencing date and dismissing Trump’s request to toss the verdict, Merchan was unmoved by Trump’s arguments, including a claim of presidential immunity.

“Defendant argues that a dismissal will ‘improve public confidence’ in the criminal justice system because anything short of a full dismissal will interfere with the presidency,” Merchan wrote. “This court’s perspective is different.”

The justice wrote that setting aside the jury verdict “would not serve the concerns set forth by the Supreme Court in its handful of cases addressing presidential immunity nor would it serve the rule of law.” Instead, he wrote, it would “undermine the rule of law in immeasurable ways.”

Trump was indicted four times in the span of a few months in 2023, twice on federal charges, once in Fulton County, Georgia, and once in New York.

The two federal cases have been withdrawn since Trump won the election, and the Georgia case has been stalled for months. In December, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was removed from the election interference case against Trump and other defendants, citing her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she chose for the case.

Although the Justice Department’s long-standing policy against prosecuting a sitting president does not apply to state charges, most legal experts say it would be difficult to pursue the case against Trump in Georgia while he is in office.

But Trump will most likely continue to face civil proceedings. He recently lost a bid for a new federal trial in a case brought by a New York writer, E. Jean Carroll. That case centered on Carroll’s claim that Trump had sexually assaulted her decades ago in a department store dressing room.

New York Attorney General Letitia James said she would not seek to dismiss a separate $486 million civil fraud judgment against him, noting her intention in a letter last month to Trump lawyer John Sauer, who is the president-elect’s pick for the Justice Department solicitor general.