Yesterday, Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to officially become a convicted felon. He is not above the law, as the probation report said he views himself, and was sentenced in a criminal case at the conclusion of the hush money case in Manhattan, about a week and a half before he will be sworn in again as the leader of this country. For that, we commend Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who stood firm in the face of intimidation and legal maneuvering to see this case through.
Merchan handled the trial and the post-trial period astutely, holding off sentencing until after the election and then indicating that an unconditional discharge would be his decision.
The sentence follows the failure of Trump’s last-minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop it. Thankfully, the justices said no, on a vote of 5-4. That any justices at all would have seen fit to intervene in this state-level sentencing of an individual found guilty by a jury after a full criminal proceeding — not on any procedural or due process arguments but simply because Trump doesn’t feel like being labeled a convicted felon throughout his presidency — is just one more embarrassment for the court.
But that doesn’t bother the four justices who wanted to help Trump: Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Their agreeing to interfere came right after Trump spoke by phone with Alito, ostensibly about an applicant for an agency general counsel position that had been an Alito clerk. Color us doubtful of that explanation, which would be a little more believable if either Trump or Alito had given us much reason to take them at their word or assume good faith.
This should have been a 9-0 decision, and we shudder to imagine that it might have gone the other way entirely had Merchan not signaled that the sentence would be unconditional discharge, or effectively nothing. Not that it necessarily should have been anything else; Trump was a first-time nonviolent offender, after all, and while we stand steadfastly behind the principles of equal application of the law, it is inarguable that having any kind of detention or probation conditions against a sitting president would have heavy logistical and legal impediments.
So this is where we end up. Trump, through sleight of hand, subservient courts, procedural delay and the existence of a system that generally never assumed a president or presidential candidate would act in the ways that he has, is headed for a second term without ultimately facing almost any material penalties for his conduct.
The impeachments didn’t get across the finish line, the federal criminal cases, tackling some of the worst imaginable offenses for a person tasked with being a steward for the country’s interests, were dismissed upon Trump’s November election following his own Florida Federal Judge Aileen Cannon’s efforts to throw a wrench in the works.
His civil judgments for defaming and sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll will remain, as will this verdict, though he is going to appeal. As for the rest, he got away with it.
Still, unless an appeal changes it, he is now, fully, officially and formally, a convicted felon.
