A NEW YORK judge has set US president-elect Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case for 10 January, ten days before his White House inauguration. 

However, Judge Juan Merchan said he was not inclined to impose jail time on the former president. 

Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in May last year after a jury found he had fraudulently manipulated business records to cover up an alleged sexual encounter with porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.

Trump says that Daniels’ story is false and that he did nothing wrong.

In a written decision today, Judge Merchan signalled that he would sentence Trump to what is known as a conditional discharge, in which a case gets dismissed if a defendant avoids re-arrest.

The judge rejected Trump’s push to dismiss the verdict and throw out the case on presidential immunity grounds and because of his impending return to the White House.

He said he found “no legal impediment to sentencing” Trump and that it was “incumbent” on him to sentence Trump prior to his swearing in on 20 January.

“Only by bringing finality to this matter” will the interests of justice be served, Judge Merchan wrote.

The judge in the only criminal case against Trump that has gone to trial indefinitely postponed his sentencing at a hearing on 22 November, given his win in the 5 November presidential election.

Trump’s lawyers urged Judge Merchan to throw it out, arguing that 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 in their cases.

Trump takes office on 20 January as the first former president to be convicted of a crime and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office.

His conviction left the 78-year-old facing the possibility of punishment ranging from a fine or probation to up to four years in prison.

The case centred on how Trump accounted for reimbursing his personal lawyer for the Daniels payment. The lawyer, Michael Cohen, fronted the money.

He later recouped it through a series of payments that Trump’s company logged as legal expenses.

Trump, by then in the White House, signed most of the cheques himself.

Prosecutors said the designation was meant to cloak the true purpose of the payments and help cover up a broader effort to keep voters from hearing unflattering claims about the Republican during his first campaign.

Trump said that Cohen was legitimately paid for legal services, and that Daniels’ story was suppressed to avoid embarrassing Trump’s family, not to influence the electorate.

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 gave evidence that they discussed the repayment arrangement in the Oval Office.

Trumphas decried the verdict as the “rigged, disgraceful” result of a “witch hunt” pursued by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat.

Before Trump’s November election, his lawyers sought to reverse his conviction for a different reason: a US Supreme Court decision in July that gave presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.

That request was still pending when the election raised new issues.

While urging Judge 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 US 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 largely on hold.

With reporting from Press Association