Editorial: Justice Juan Merchan got it just right with Donald Trump's sentencing

Chicago Tribune Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune on Jan 13, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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Donald Trump, felon, will remain exactly that. A felon. He also will remain a free man, ready to take the oath of office Jan. 20 to be the duly elected 47th president of the United States, able to do the will of the people without concern for his personal legal travails.

That was the upshot of New York Justice Juan Merchan’s deft handling, with a critical assist from the U.S. Supreme Court, of Trump’s conviction on cover-up charges tied to hush-money payments he made to porn star Stormy Daniels to conceal Trump’s long-ago dalliance with her. Merchan on Friday handed down a rare sentence of unconditional discharge, essentially allowing Trump to walk away free without restriction of any kind.

No jail time. No probation. No fines. But the felonies stand and Merchan made it very clear there would have been punishment were the man before him, convicted in May on 34 felony counts, not also president-elect.

Forced to zoom into the proceedings from his Mar-a-Lago base in Florida, Trump heard Merchan tell him directly that the lack of consequences “do not reduce the seriousness of the crime or justify its commission in any way.”

Predictably, Trump was combative, reiterating his view of the prosecution as a “political witch hunt.”

But Merchan, as well as the five Supreme Court justices who on Thursday rebuffed Trump’s bid to delay sentencing until after his upcoming presidential term, delivered a more important message than the one addressing the sordid details around Trump’s efforts to keep the Daniels story from the voting public before they went to the polls in 2016. Merchan and the justices reminded both citizen Trump and President-elect Trump that the laws of the land apply to him as they do every other American.

No, they don’t always apply equally, as the pragmatic Merchan clearly recognized when he declined to punish Trump for his crimes. But they do apply.

Merchan, who has conducted himself with dignity as he’s endured much social media abuse from Trump through the process of adjudicating this case, wished Trump “godspeed” as the president-elect signed off from the proceeding.

Trump is about to take the reins of American government again, and no doubt in the coming years there will be other Trumpian confrontations with the third branch of government. All the more welcome, then, was the bracing reminder for him, and for all of us, that the Constitution renders the judiciary as a co-equal branch of government.

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