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United States (US) President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced to an unconditional discharge on Friday (Jan 10) in the hush money case.
According to American media reports, Trump's sentence of an unconditional discharge capped a norm-smashing case which saw the former and upcoming president being charged with 34 felonies, put on trial for almost two months, and convicted on every count.
Manhattan Judge Juan M.Merchan could have sentenced Trump to up to four years in prison.
Also read | Trump hush money case: US president-elect sentenced to unconditional discharge. What does it mean?
However, he chose a sentence that sidestepped thorny constitutional issues by effectively ending the case but assured that the 78-year-old Republican became the first person convicted of a felony to assume the presidency.
So what has been the timeline of the case? Here's a detailed guide as per American media reports:
January 2005: Donald Trump marries his current wife Melania.
September 2005: Months later, Trump confesses in a show about grabbing women’s genitals without asking for permission. The footage wasn’t aired and didn’t become public until October 2016, the time when Trump became the Republican contender for the presidential election.
June 2006: Former Playboy model Karen McDougal says this is when she first met Trump, after “The Apprentice” filmed at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. McDougal has alleged they went on to have a 10-month affair that ended in 2007, a claim he denies.
July 2006: Former adult entertainment star Stormy Daniel and Trump meet at an event. Daniels alleged they had a sexual encounter, but Trump denied it.
May 2011: Daniels shares her claim about the encounter in an interview with In Touch magazine, but the story was not published at the time. In October 2011, Trump's fixer Michael Cohen sent an email to the publication saying Trump would aggressively pursue legal action if the story was printed. The story does not run until 2018.
June 2015: Trump announces that he would seek the Republican Party's nomination for president.
August 2015: Trump and Michael Cohen meet with David Pecker, then chief executive officer of The National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc (AMI).
During Pecker's testimony, he said during the meeting with Trump and Cohen that he would act as the eyes and ears of the Republican leader's campaign, notifying Cohen of the claims being made about Trump so that rights can be purchased and stories quashed.
October 2015: Trouble arises for Trump. Pecker learnt that a former Trump Tower doorman was trying to sell a story that Trump fathered a child with an employee. The doorman is identified as Dino Sajudin.
November 2015: In mid-November, the National Enquirer paid Sajudin $30,000 for the rights to the rumour. The tabloid concluded that the story was not true. Trump and the employee at the Trump Tower denied the allegations.
August 2016: Weeks after Donald Trump officially became the Republican presidential nominee, AMI bought the story about former Playboy model Karen McDougal's claim that she had an affair with Trump.
AMI paid her $150,000, agreed to feature her on two magazine covers and to publish 100 magazine articles authored by her.
September 2016: On September 6, Cohen recorded himself briefing Trump on the plan to buy McDougal's story from AMI. Cohen said on the tape that he had already spoken with the Trump Organization’s finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, on “how to set the whole thing up.”
Towards the end of this month, Cohen signed an agreement to buy the nondisclosure part of McDougal’s contract for $125,000 through a company called Resolution Consultants LLC.
October 2016: In early October, Pecker told Cohen that the deal for him to buy McDougal’s nondisclosure was off. Cohen never pays the $125,000.
On October 7, The Washington Post published Trump's 2005 tape where he spoke during a show about grabbing women’s genitals without asking for permission.
A day later, Stormy Daniels' representative told the National Enquirer that she was willing to make on-the-record statements confirming a sexual encounter with Trump.
Also read | Who is Stormy Daniels, porn star linked to Donald Trump's hush money case?
Pecker and Howard connect Michael Cohen with Daniels' lawyer Keith Davidson. During the next few days, Cohen negotiates a $130,000 deal to acquire the rights to Daniels’ story and keep her quiet.
On October 27, Cohen wired payment to Davidson's law firm using a shell company. The next day, Daniels signed a confidential settlement and non-disclosure agreement. The deal used the pseudonyms Peggy Peterson for Daniels and David Dennison for Trump.
November 2016: Four days before the November 8 presidential election, The Wall Street Journal published a story revealing McDougal’s deal with AMI.
The WSJ story also mentioned Daniels and said she had been in talks with a TV network to tell her story but cut off negotiations.
Trump wins the presidential election.
January 2017: Days after being sworn in as president, Cohen sought reimbursement from the Trump Organization for his $130,000 payment to Daniels as well as an additional $50,000 for unrelated campaign “tech services.”
Testifying in court, former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney recalled meeting with the company’s longtime Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who came up with a plan to pay Cohen the money he owed.
McConney said that January 27 was Cohen's last day as a full-time employee of the Trump Organization.
February 2017: Cohen emails an invoice to McConney seeking payment “pursuant to the retainer agreement” for services rendered for January and February 2017. The invoice requested a $35,000 payment for each of those two months — the first two monthly instalments of his repayment plan.
January 2018: On January 10, Stormy Daniels issued a statement saying the allegations regarding Trump were false and the rumours that she received hush money were false too.
Two days later, the WSJ revealed Conhen's payment details to the former adult entertainment star.
February 2018: Cohen told American media that he paid Daniels out of his own pocket.
April 2018: On April 5, Trump told the news agency Associated Press that he did not know of the hush money paid to Daniels.
However, weeks later, the then-US president acknowledged that Cohen represented him in the Stormy Daniels deal.
May 2018: On May 2, Rudy Giuliana- who was representing Trump as one of his lawyers, said that his client reimbursed Cohen for the money paid to Daniels.
A day later, Trump said that Cohen received a monthly retainer to enter into a non-disclosure agreement.
July 2018: On July 24, Cohen's lawyer releases the September 2016 recording of Cohen talking to Trump about the payments.
August 2018: Nearly a month later, Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other charges that included arranging the hush money payments.
At the hearing, he claims Trump directed him to arrange the payment. Trump is never charged with any crime related to the federal investigation. Cohen is later sentenced to three years in prison.
September 2018: AMI entered into a non-prosecution with Manhattan prosecutors in connection with its McDougal deal.
August 2019: The Trump Organization is served a grand jury subpoena from then-Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance’s office calling for records and communications relating to the payments to Daniels and McDougal.
The year 2020: Trump faces defeat in the presidential election against Joe Biden.
The year 2023: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg elects a new grand jury to hear evidence about Trump in the case.
On March 30, the grand jury indicted Trump on state charges for allegations that he falsified internal records kept by his company to hide the true nature of payments made to Cohen for helping cover up the alleged encounters. The indictment makes Trump the first former president to be charged with a crime.
Days later, Trump is arraigned. He pleads not guilty and vows to fight the charges.
Key moments of 2024 and 2025
On April 15, 2024, Trump went on trial in Manhattan. The trial lasted for weeks. The jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts in the trial.
Trump's legal team said that the Republican would appeal his conviction. As he awaited sentencing, Trump on June 4 asked Judge Merchan to lift the limited gag order that prevented him from speaking about witnesses, jurors and others associated with the case.
On June 25, Merchan agreed to partially lift Trump's gag order- granting him the ability to speak freely about the jury and witnesses in the case.
On November 5, Trump wins the election against Harris. A week later, Judge Merchan is scheduled to rule on Trump's motion to set aside his conviction based on the US Supreme Court's recent decision on presidential immunity.
Merchan instead agrees to delay the decision till November 19 after both sides request more time to consider how to proceed following Trump's election victory.
On November 19, after Trump's lawyers argued in a filing that the case should be dismissed because a sitting president is immune from prosecution, prosecutors told Merchan that they opposed any effort to dismiss Trump's conviction -- but that they do not object to pausing the case until Trump was out of office.
A day later, his lawyers argued that the president's conviction must be tossed due to presidential immunity.
Weeks later, his lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case on grounds that prosecution disrupted the president-elect's transition and threatened the functioning of the federal government. The Manhattan DA's office faced a December 9 deadline to respond to Trump's motion.
On December 10, Manhattan DA Bragg suggested to Judge Merchan that Trump could receive a non-incarceratory sentence -- or his sentencing could be delayed until he left office.
In a court filing done three days later, Trump's lawyers rejected the suggestions made by Bragg.
Fast-forward to January 2025, Merchan orders Trump to appear, either in person or virtually, for sentencing in New York on Jan 10, and indicates that he intends to sentence the president-elect to an "unconditional discharge."
(With inputs from agencies)