Donald Trump got the sentence he deserved.

An embittered Judge Juan Merchan, sitting in a Manhattan courtroom, handed the president-elect an unconditional discharge on his 34 felony convictions related to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.

No jail time. No probation. No fines.

The penalty was befitting the crime ginned up by Trump-hating New York City prosecutor Alvin Bragg, who saw as his duty assuring Trump never returned to the White House.

Bragg operated under Stalinist legal principle, "Give me the man and I will give you the case against him."

The case he brought against Trump was shameful, and the trial before Merchan a Star Chamber.

Trump was accused of falsifying his books to hide the payments to Daniels, which were not illegal, for the purpose of covering up another crime.

But the specific crime that was being covered up remains fuzzy. The prosecutor gave the jury multiple choices, including violations of state or federal campaign finance law, influencing an election and tax evasion.

Then Merchan made the incredible ruling that all 12 jurors didn't have to agree on which of those crimes had been committed. Even if some believed he was guilty of one crime and some another, the judge would consider it a unanimous verdict. Key defense witnesses were not allowed to take the stand.

Trump's conviction gave Bragg exactly what he sought: the opening for Democrats to campaign against Trump as a convicted felon.

Two other New York courtrooms also made contributions to the lawfare effort. A civil jury ruled in favor of a woman who claims Trump sexually assaulted her and then defamed her in denying her allegation. Democrats quickly and falsely tagged Trump as a convicted rapist.

Rarely mentioned is that the lawsuit was financed by a billionaire Democratic donor or that the alleged victim couldn't remember in what year the assault occurred.

A third New York jury convicted Trump of fraud for inflating the value of his real estate holdings, not an uncommon practice by developers. A federal judge fined him $355 million, even though harm was never established. The extraordinary penalty seemed designed to drain Trump of resources needed for his reelection bid.

Similar legal attacks were mounted in Georgia, where a prosecutor teamed with her lover to fulfill her campaign promise to put Trump in jail, and in Florida, where Trump was charged with mishandling classified documents by a Justice Department that dismissed similar complaints against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden.

Smoke always leads to fire. Trump surely has been no choir boy, and his character as a businessman fell well short of being upstanding. The same goes for his personal behavior.

There could have been no hush money trial had there been no hush money payments, and no payments had the married Trump not dallied with a porn star.

But he was misused by a legal system that forged an unholy alliance with the political system to bring down a man they both despised.

Voters exonerated Trump in November. That he'll soon be sitting in the White House instead of a prison cell should put an end to the practice of using courtrooms as a political tool.

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