President-elect Donald Trump faces sentencing Friday for his New York hush money conviction after the nation’s highest court refused to intervene.
Here’s the latest:
Remind me again, what was this case about?
Trump was convicted last May of 34 counts of falsifying business records, making him the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes.
The jury found that he falsified records kept by his company to hide the purpose of reimbursements to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen, who had made a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 campaign to silence her claim of an extramarital sexual encounter. Trump denies they had sex.
What happened to Trump’s other cases?
The hush money case was the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments to go to trial.
Since his Nov. 5 election, special counsel Jack Smith ended his two federal cases. One pertained to Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss; the other alleged he hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
A separate, state-level election interference case in Georgia is in limbo after an appeals court removed prosecutor Fani Willis from the case.
Is the sentencing streaming anywhere?
No. New York state trial-level courts rarely, if ever, livestream their proceedings. Appeals courts sometimes do.
A look at the judge who is sentencing Trump
Judge Juan M. Merchan has presided over Manhattan felony cases since 2009, after three years in family court. Before that, he was a Manhattan prosecutor and a lawyer for New York state.
Trump has pointed to factors including Merchan’s total of $35 in 2020 donations to Democrats – including President Joe Biden – to argue that the judge is biased and should step away from the case.
A state court ethics panel opined in 2023 that Merchan could continue handling the case, and he avowed that he could be fair and impartial. Read more about Merchan, who also oversees Manhattan’s Mental Health Court.
