January 03, 2025 04:29 PM UTC

Trump Will Take Office As The First Felon

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• by: Colorado Pols

As The Washington Post reports, the New York state felony conviction against once and future President Donald Trump has been upheld by presiding judge Juan Marcan, and Trump will pending some unforeseen development take office on January 20th as the first President of the United States so besmirched:

President-elect Donald Trump will be sentenced on 34 counts of falsifying business records ahead of his swearing-in on Jan. 20, but is not expected to face jail time, a judge ruled Friday.

The decision to uphold Trump’s conviction and schedule the sentencing Jan. 10 almost certainly means Trump will be the first felon to serve as a U.S. president.

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan wrote in his ruling that he does not intend to sentence Trump to jail. He said he plans to order an “unconditional discharge,” a designation in New York criminal courts for a non-jail and non-probation sentence that carries no other obligations.

Even if Trump had lost the election, the penalty for the crimes Trump was convicted of would likely not have resulted in jail time, and by not imposing any further penalty the judge can sidestep concerns about prosecuting a sitting or about to be sitting President. But as Merchan wrote in his decision, that doesn’t allow a President to make crimes committed before taking office just go away:

“Binding precedent does not provide that an individual, upon becoming President, can retroactively dismiss or vacate prior criminal acts nor does it grant blanket Presidential-elect immunity. This Court is therefore forbidden from recognizing either form of immunity.”

As soon as this token sentence is handed down Trump is fully expected to appeal to overturn his conviction. The stigma of a felony conviction is a disgrace that will eat at Trump much like his two impeachments, and he won’t be able to resist revisiting the case long past the point doing so is helpful to his legacy. For now and maybe for all time, for the crime of cooking his company’s books to conceal hush money payments to a porn star, the stigma is the punishment for Donald Trump.

While perhaps not the most morally compelling of the many cases against Donald Trump, it’s the one that stuck.