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Donald Trump has become America’s first convicted felon president after a New York state court formally sentenced him on January 10 over 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal. However, this is no win for the rule of law. Trump’s constant attempts to delegitimise and pick apart the American justice system have worked.
As a convicted felon, Trump won’t be able to buy a gun in some states, travel to 38 countries including Canada and Japan without a waiver, or do jury duty. Yet Trump was sentenced only to an “unconditional discharge”, meaning he will face no further penalties. Nearly half of people convicted of the same crime in the state of New York would go to prison, and Trump could have faced a fine of up to US$170,000 (£140,000).
Even Trump’s former advisers, Paul Manafort and Steve Bannon, went to prison for the same hush money case that eventually led to the president-elect’s conviction, as did his former fixer Michael Cohen. But Trump’s relationship with the justice system is to use delay tactics such as appeals and public and private pressure campaigns to bend the rules.
In July, the US Supreme Court ruled that presidents have immunity for actions taken while in office. With that ruling, the judiciary effectively gave up its ability to check a sitting president, undercutting horizontal forms of accountability that are so critical to democracy. This has given Trump the green light to carry on with his assaults on the rule of law.
The only recent check on Trump’s power was the Supreme Court’s decision, passed by five votes to four, to allow the sentencing for the hush money trial to take place. This decision followed a call between Trump and Justice Sam Alito, in which Alito said the case was not discussed. In the world of authoritarian regimes, similar types of phone calls are known as telephone law, a legal framework where a leader habitually contacts judges to direct the outcome of critical cases.
When Trump is not trying to influence judges directly, he is denigrating those who do not comply with his agenda. With this latest case, Trump has shown no contrition and even showed contempt for Justice Juan Merchan, the judge who oversaw his trial. In a social media post on January 4, Trump claimed the charges against him were “made up” by Merchan, whom Trump referred to as “the most conflicted judge in New York state history”.
It is not just Merchan who has faced Trump’s wrath. Trump has in the past attacked US-born federal judge Gonzalo Curiel over the blocking of a border wall with Mexico, saying Curiel could not be impartial because he was “Mexican”. While this is not as bad as when former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez sent a sitting judge to prison for ruling against his wishes, it is not yet clear where Trump’s new justice system will take the US.
Trump has certainly revolutionised the way we think about the US presidency. In 1972, burglars were arrested after breaking into the Democratic party’s national headquarters in Washington. Former US president Richard Nixon was subsequently accused of engaging in a cover-up in what became known as the Watergate scandal. By the autumn of 1974, 58% of Americans said that Nixon should be tried for criminal charges and 53% felt that he should not be pardoned if found guilty.
Trump has not faced the same level of backlash. According to a YouGov survey released on the day of his sentencing, 48% of Americans believed Trump had committed a crime in the hush money case. However, 28% did not. In addition, though 42% of Americans thought Trump is treated more leniently than other people, 30% think he is treated too harshly.
Tracking Trump’s trials
Trump faces a few other active cases, too. But these criminal cases have mostly faded away. Special Counsel Jack Smith had to give up the January 6 insurrection case (and recently resigned from the Justice Department) after Trump’s electoral victory. And over the summer, Judge Aileen Cannon, whose name is being cited for a potential role in the Trump administration, threw out the case against Trump over taking classified documents to his home in Florida.
Trump was also accused of conspiring with others to overturn the results of the 2020 US election in the state of Georgia. This appeared the most dangerous of the four criminal cases that Trump was facing as the crimes were more serious and he could not potentially pardon himself for state-level crimes.
But numerous delays, appeals and accusations of conflicts of interest caused the case to stall. District Attorney Fani Willis was moved off the case, and though she has appealed, this will take months to come to a resolution. She would probably have to wait until Trump is out of office for him to be tried, and it is not clear if there will still be an appetite for this.
Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, has also been convicted of 17 counts of tax fraud, among other crimes. A civil court found Trump guilty of business fraud in February 2024 and fined him a staggering US$350 million due to years of engaging in fraud. This has now swelled to more than US$500 million, but Trump has yet to pay anything.
And another civil court found him liable for sexual assault in May 2023, something he tried to appeal unsuccessfully. When ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos referred on air to the decision of this case as one of “rape” rather than “sexual abuse”, Trump sued and ABC was forced to cough up US$15 million, a scary omen of things to come for the free press.
Trump will now forever have a stain on his record as the only US president who broke the law (Nixon resigned before any criminal charges were filed). For many Americans, though, it doesn’t seem to really matter.
Natasha Lindstaedt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
