It’s been roughly six months since a New York jury found Donald Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of the Republican’s hush money scandal. It was the first time in American history in which a former president was found to have committed multiple felonies.
The president-elect and his legal defense team explored every possible opportunity to derail sentencing in the case, even appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, pointing to its highly controversial immunity ruling from last year. But while four Republican-appointed jurists — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — indicated the day before sentencing that they would have sided with the defendant, they were in the minority.
Out of options, Trump faced the one thing he desperately tries to avoid: accountability for wrongdoing.
Judge Juan Merchan delivered an unconditional discharge sentence to the president-elect on Friday morning, making him a convicted felon in the eyes of New York state law, while wishing the defendant “godspeed” in his second term.
The night before sentencing, by way of his social media platform, the president-elect vowed to appeal the verdict.
Stepping back, it’s worth appreciating the fact that Trump has racked up an amazing number of firsts during his relatively brief political career. The Republican is, for example, the first president to be impeached twice. He’s also the first candidate to ever win the presidency despite never having served the public in any way.
Trump is the first former president to have been held liable for sexual abuse. He was the first president to get caught overseeing a fraudulent charity. And a fraudulent university. And a business that was found to have repeatedly committed fraud.
In 2021, Trump became the first president to deny his successor a peaceful transition of power in the wake of his defeat. He was similarly the first president to try to hold onto power in defiance of election voters.
In 2023, Trump became the first former president to be indicted on criminal charges, only to soon after become the first former president to be also indicted on federal criminal charges.
And in 2025, just 10 days before his second inaugural, he can add a new first to the list: Americans have had dozens of presidents, but the convicted felon is now the first president sentenced for a crime. That said, the judge didn’t exactly throw the book at the criminal defendant. Given the president-elect’s recent online hysterics about the case and Merchan, one might be under the impression that the New York jurist was preparing to put Trump in a prison cell. That’s not even close to what happened. In fact, given the details of an “unconditional discharge” sentence — which my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained well — Trump is hardly being punished at all. But as a political matter, the end result is the same: The president-elect can disagree with the jury’s verdict, he can continue to condemn the judge who heard the case, and he can continue to pursue appeals, but now that he’s been sentenced, he’s still poised to enter the White House as a convicted felon. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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