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President-elect Donald Trump (AP file photo)
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced on Friday to no punishment in his historic hush money case. This ruling allows him to return to the White House without the looming threat of a jail term or a fine.
With Trump appearing by video from his Florida estate, the sentence quietly capped an extraordinary case rife with moments unthinkable in the US only a few years ago.
It was the first criminal prosecution and first conviction of a former US president and major presidential candidate. The New York case became the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that ever will. And the sentencing came 10 days before his inauguration for his second term.
In roughly six minutes of remarks to the court, a calm but insistent Trump called the case “a weaponization of government” and “an embarrassment to New York.” He maintained that he did not commit any crime.
“It’s been a political witch hunt. It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election, and, obviously, that didn’t work,” the Republican president-elect said by video, with US flags in the background
BY MICHAEL R. SISAK, JENNIFER PELTZ, JAKE OFFENHARTZ AND MICHELLE L. PRICE
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