A local judge granted President-elect Donald Trump unconditional discharge in connection with his conviction in the hush money case on Friday, 10 days before he is to enter the White House, but did not give him a prison term or other penalty.
Judge Juan Merchan handed down an "unconditional discharge" to Trump, who appeared before the local court via video link, confirming his conviction without consequences after the Supreme Court refused to intervene.
Trump will be the first President to enter office with a criminal record.
It was a pyrrhic victory for the local prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, who was elected as a Democratic Party candidate, and Vice President Kamala Harris, who used the conviction as a propaganda point, because 1.77 million American voters repudiated them and elected Trump as President.
Trump, who spoke at the sentencing from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida through a video link, said, “This is a great embarrassment to the state of New York”.
The voters saw firsthand what transpired and elected him, he said.
Merchan said that he was deferring to Trump becoming the President but would have penalised him if he were a private citizen.
Trump maintained his innocence.
The case originated from allegations by a porn star that she had a sexual encounter with Trump.
Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 before his 2016 election to buy her silence.
Trump reimbursed the lawyer, and the payments were shown as legal expenses, which the prosecutor said was a criminal fraud and the jury accepted it.
Bragg multiplied each of the checks that he wrote and the ledger entries into individual criminal offenses to inflate the convictions to 34.
Trump denied her claim of a tryst and maintained that he paid her to spare his family embarrassment.
A jury found him guilty of the 34 crimes before the November election, and the sentencing was delayed because of the election and his appeals.
Read also| Kremlin: Putin Open to Contact with Trump After January 20
