NEW YORK (AP) — In an extraordinary turn, a judge Friday set President-elect Donald Trump's sentencing in his hush money criminal case for Jan. 10 — little over a week before he's due to return to the White House — but indicated he wouldn't be jailed.
The development nevertheless leaves Trump on course to be the first president to take office convicted of felony crimes.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial, signaled in a written decision that he'd sentence the former and future president to what's known as an unconditional discharge, in which a conviction stands but the case is closed without jail time, a fine or probation. Trump can appear virtually for sentencing, if he chooses.
Rejecting Trump’s push to dismiss the verdict and throw out the case on presidential immunity grounds and because of his impending second term, Merchan wrote that only “bringing finality to this matter” would serve the interests of justice.
He said he sought to balance Trump’s ability to govern, “unencumbered” by the case, against other interests: the U.S. Supreme Court's July ruling on presidential immunity and the public’s expectation “that all are equal and no one is above the law,” and the importance of respecting a jury verdict.
“This court is simply not persuaded that the first factor outweighs the others at this stage of the proceeding,” Merchan wrote in an 18-page decision.
Trump lashed out at Merchan on his Truth Social platform Friday, writing that it “would be the end of the Presidency as we know it” if the judge’s ruling is allowed to stand.
He repeated his claims that the case was an “illegitimate political attack” and “nothing but a Rigged Charade” perpetuated by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat. He didn’t elaborate on potential next legal moves.
Bragg’s office declined to comment on Merchan’s ruling.
Former Manhattan Judge Diane Kiesel said the ruling can’t be appealed under New York law, but Trump nonetheless might try to appeal it. In any event, he can appeal his conviction — a step that can’t be taken until he is sentenced — but he won't be able to pardon himself. Trump’s case was tried in state court, but presidential pardons only apply to federal crimes.
Trump takes office Jan. 20 as the first former president to be convicted of a crime and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office.
The Republican was found guilty in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The charges involved an alleged scheme to hide a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in the last weeks of Trump’s first campaign in 2016. The payout was made to keep her from publicizing claims she’d had sex with the married Trump years earlier. He says that her story is false and that he did nothing wrong.
The case centered on how Trump accounted for reimbursing his personal attorney at the time, Michael Cohen, for the Daniels payment. Cohen on Friday called Merchan’s decision to go ahead with the sentencing “judicious and appropriate.”
The conviction left Trump, 78, facing the possibility of punishment ranging from a fine or probation to up to four years in prison. His sentencing initially was set for last July 11, then postponed twice at the defense’s request.
Then, after Trump's Nov. 5 election, Merchan delayed the sentencing again so the defense and prosecution could weigh in on the future of the case.
Trump’s lawyers urged Merchan to toss it. They said it would otherwise pose unconstitutional “disruptions” to the incoming president’s ability to run the country.
Prosecutors acknowledged there should be some accommodation for his upcoming presidency, but they insisted the conviction should stand.
They suggested various options, such as freezing the case during his term or guaranteeing him a no-jail sentence. They also proposed closing the case while formally noting both his conviction and his undecided appeal — a novel idea drawn from what some state courts do when criminal defendants die while appealing their cases.
Merchan ruled that Trump’s current status as president-elect does not afford him the same immunity as a sitting president. Setting the verdict aside and dismissing the case would be a “drastic” step and would “undermine the Rule of Law in immeasurable ways,” Merchan wrote.
Before Trump’s November election, his lawyers sought to reverse his conviction for a different reason: the Supreme Court's immunity decision, which gave presidents broad protection from criminal prosecution.
Trump was a private citizen — campaigning for president, but neither elected nor sworn in — when Cohen paid Daniels in October 2016. He was president when Cohen was reimbursed, and Cohen testified that they discussed the repayment arrangement in the Oval Office.
The Trump hush money attorneys contended that the jury got some evidence that should have been shielded by presidential immunity. Merchan later rejected that argument, but in the meantime, the election raised new issues.
While urging Merchan to nix the conviction, Trump also sought to move the case to federal court, where he could also assert immunity. A federal judge repeatedly said no, but Trump appealed.
The hush money case was the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments to go to trial.
Since the election, special counsel Jack Smith has 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.
Trump's lawyers argued that Smith’s decision to dismiss the federal indictments against Trump should propel a dismissal of the New York hush money case, as well. But Merchan said he found that argument unpersuasive, noting that the hush money case was in a “vastly” different stage.
Associated Press writer Larry Neumeister contributed.
FILE — Michael Cohen leaves his apartment building in New York, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
FILE — Adult film actress Stormy Daniels attends the opening of the adult entertainment fair "Venus," in Berlin, Oct. 11, 2018. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
FILE - Judge Juan M. Merchan sits for a portrait in his chambers in New York, March 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
FILE - Former President Donald Trump waits for the start of proceedings in Manhattan criminal court, April 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, Pool, File)
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — When Roselins Sequera's family of seven finally reached the U.S. from Venezuela, they spent weeks at a migrant shelter on the Texas border that gave them a place to sleep, meals and tips for finding work.
“We had a plan to go to Iowa" to join friends, said Sequera, who arrived at the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in October. “But we didn’t know how.”
Dozens of shelters run by aid groups on the U.S. border with Mexico have welcomed large numbers of migrants, providing lifelines of support and relief to overwhelmed cities. They work closely with the Border Patrol to care for migrants released with notices to appear in immigration court, many of whom don't know where they are or how to find the nearest airport or bus station.
But Republican scrutiny of the shelters is intensifying, and President-elect Donald Trump's allies consider them a magnet for illegal immigration. Many are nonprofits that rely on federal funding, including $650 million under one program last year alone.
The incoming Trump administration has pledged to carry out an ambitious immigration agenda, including a campaign promise of mass deportations. The new White House's potential playbook includes using the National Guard to arrest migrants and installing buoy barriers on the waters between the U.S. and Mexico.
As part of that agenda, Trump's incoming border czar, Tom Homan, has vowed to review the role of nongovernmental organizations and whether they helped open “the doors to this humanitarian crisis.” Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who along with Elon Musk was tapped by Trump to find ways to cut federal spending, has signaled that the groups are in his sights and called them “a waste of taxpayer dollars.”
“Americans deserve transparency on opaque foreign aid & nonprofit groups abetting our own border crisis,” Ramaswamy said last month in a post on X.
The Trump administration did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The developments have alarmed immigration advocates and some officials in border communities, including Republicans, who say those communities can collapse without shelter space or a budget to pay for humanitarian costs.
Aid groups deny that they are aiding illegal immigration. They say they are responding to emergencies foisted on border towns and performing humanitarian work.
“The groundwork is being laid here in Texas for a larger assault on nonprofits that are just trying to protect people’s civil rights,” said Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, an advocacy group.
For the past year, Texas has launched investigations into six organizations that provide shelter, food and travel advice to migrants. Courts have so far largely rebuffed the state's efforts, including rejecting a lawsuit to shut down El Paso's Annunciation House, but several cases remain on appeal.
The Texas Civil Rights Project, which represents two organizations being probed by the state, says it has trained more than 100 migrant aid organizations in the weeks since Trump’s reelection on how to respond if investigators come knocking.
The Texas investigations began after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott alleged in 2022, without evidence, that border nonprofits were encouraging illegal crossings and transporting migrants.
Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, which operates a shelter in McAllen with capacity for 1,200 people, was notified by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in March that authorities wanted to interview the executive director, Sister Norma Pimentel, to investigate whether there were “practices for facilitating alien crossings over the Texas-Mexico border.”
Pimentel declined to comment to The Associated Press, citing the ongoing case, but attorneys representing her organization responded to the accusations in court calling them a "fishing expedition into a pond where no one has ever seen a fish.”
In downtown McAllen, a large lobby serves as a welcome center where families receive travel information while their children play with volunteers. This year, nearly 50,000 migrants have passed through the shelter. Personal belongings and sleeping mats are in a separate section sandwiched between the lobby and the kitchen.
The Sequeras, who stayed two weeks, fell into a regimen of waking at 6 a.m., clearing sleeping mats off the floor and having breakfast by 7 a.m. They performed other chores such as cleaning or doing laundry to keep the large shelter running.
Volunteer attorneys help migrants apply for work authorization. Without that help, Sequera said, the process would have taken longer to learn and cost them thousands of dollars before they would have been able to continue their journey north.
McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos is at odds with Paxton, a fellow Republican, over the Catholic Charities investigation. His city found room for about 140 migrants a day in 2024 — a dramatic drop from 2021, when a surge in crossings across the southern U.S. border that year put the shelter over maximum capacity and forced it to close for several days.
"They have served the purpose because the feds have not acted in what they have to do,” Villalobos said. “In McAllen, we would have been lost without them.”
Former McAllen Mayor Jim Darling still recalls the night he received a call from the city manager in 2014 explaining that the bus station was closing, but 25 migrants were still waiting for a bus. He asked Pimentel at Catholic Charities for help.
Hidalgo County authorities turned to Pimentel in 2021 when migrants were being released without testing for COVID-19. Catholic Charities conducted testing and quarantined those who tested positive.
The shelters have received help from U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat who since 2019 has steered federal funding to them through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He beat back Republican opposition last year.
“Will they attack it again and try to eliminate it?" Cuellar said. "Yes.”
FILE - Phill Cady wears a t-shirt with a photo of former President Donald Trump, who is running for reelection, as he holds a sign during a "Take Our Border Back" rally on Feb. 3, 2024, in Quemado, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
FILE - Sister Norma Pimentel talks about the immigration process inside the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley on June 23, 2018, in McAllen, Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)
FILE - Migrants wait to climb over concertina wire after they crossed the Rio Grande and entered the U.S. from Mexico on Sept. 23, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
FILE - A kayaker walks past large buoys being used as a floating border barrier on the Rio Grande, Aug. 1, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
FILE - Incoming U.S. Border Czar Tom Homan, right, stands with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, left, as he makes statements before serving meals to state troopers and national guardsmen taking part in Operation Lone Star at a facility on the U.S.-Mexico border on Nov. 26, 2024, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
Roselins Sequera looks out the front door of her home, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024, in Marshalltown, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
FILE - President-elect Donald Trump speaks at AmericaFest on Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri, File)
