Donald Trump Sentenced to 'Unconditional Discharge' for His Felonies. Here's What That Means

Mar. 15, 2025

President-electDonald Trumpreceived a historic sentence on Friday, Jan. 10, from New York Judge Juan Merchan, dodging jail time and instead getting “unconditional discharge” for his 34 felony convictions.

Before the sentence was handed down, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said that — while the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office ultimately recommended unconditional discharge out of respect for the office of the presidency — he did not want to downplay Trump’s “unsubstantiated attacks” on the rule of law and his “coordinated campaign” to undermine the jury’s conclusion.

President-elect Donald Trump attends the reopening ceremony of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on Dec. 7, 2024.Blondet Eliot/ABACA/Shutterstock

Blondet Eliot/ABACA/Shutterstock

With the unanimous guilty verdict, he became the first sitting or former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. His chargescarried up to four years in prisonat the court’s discretion.

Donald Trump appears virtually from Florida for the sentencing hearing on Jan. 10, 2025.ANGELA WEISS/POOL/AFP via Getty

ANGELA WEISS/POOL/AFP via Getty

What is unconditional discharge?

When Judge Merchan set Trump’s sentencing date, he revealed that he did not intend to put the president-elect behind bars. Instead, the judge suggested, “unconditional dischargeappears to be the most viable option to ensure finality and allow Defendant to pursue his appellate options.”

Unconditional discharge is, in effect, a non-punishment — a way that New York courts can acknowledge someone’s conviction as valid while simultaneously releasing them “without imprisonment, fine or probation supervision.”

Considering Trump’s imminent inauguration — and speculation that a sitting president’s sentence would need to be paused during their time in office anyway — Merchan chose the path of least resistance with his sentence.

Despite declining to give Trump a punishment, Merchan’s final judgment is not exactly how the president-elect wanted things to play out: He remains a convicted felon.

Still, with a sentence now issued and the case closed, Trump can finally pursue a proper appeal of his verdict after seven months. His attorney said on Friday that he plans to.

Donald Trump at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse in early 2024.Justin Lane/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty

Justin Lane/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty

What did Trump get convicted for?

Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on May 30, 2024, after spendingmore than six weeks on trialin Lower Manhattan.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office brought an unprecedented case against Trump that aimed to prove he not only falsified financial records “with intent to defraud” — in this instance, to mask a $130,000 hush money payment made to adult film starStormy Danielsin the final days of his 2016 presidential campaign — but that he did so in order to conceal a second crime, which elevates the charges from misdemeanors to felonies.

In falsifying the records, the DA’s office argued, Trump was more broadly attempting to bury evidence of an illegal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.

Colloquially called Trump’s “hush money” trial, given that Daniels' hush money payment anchored the narrative, the Manhattan case went far beyond white-collar crime. It was the first of four criminal cases brought against the former president in 2023 — three of which hit on themes of election interference.

Jurors' guilty verdict signaled that — beyond a reasonable doubt — the evidence presented to them supported the prosecution’s story.

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Trump’s three other criminal cases never went to trial, but in unrelated civil lawsuits since leaving the White House, Trump has been found liable ofcommitting fraud while building his real estate empireas well assexually abusinganddefamingformerEllecolumnistE. Jean Carroll. Each of those cases carriedsubstantial fines.

source: people.com