Editorial: No free pass -- Judge Merchan should keep Trump's conviction on the books

We commend Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for standing firm and opposing the dismissal of the hush money/Stormy Daniels case that resulted in Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions in New York last spring.

Now Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan should do the right thing and stay Trump’s sentence until he serves out his second term in the White House — but let the conviction stand. We find Trump’s argument that the verdict delivered by the electorate on Election Day should render moot the verdict delivered in Manhattan criminal court unpersuasive.

Trump’s lawyers argue that it is ridiculous to have a state criminal sentence overhanging a president for the entirety of his term, and we agree that it is a bizarre situation, but one borne of a bizarre situation that this president — who hid campaign-related payments to a porn actress he had an affair with — and the country that elected him have put themselves in.

It is even more ridiculous, we believe, to have this conviction — not a politically-enacted one, not a frivolous finding, but the result of a full trial and unanimous jury — disappear because Trump is now on his way back to the White House.

The three other Trump criminal cases, a federal indictment and Georgia indictment related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his illegal retention and hiding of classified documents, are, in fact, disappearing. The reason is mostly the calendar and an overly broad immunity decision about “official acts” from the U.S. Supreme Court. Had there been sufficient time, those were strong cases with more than a possibility of resulting in convictions and prison time for the former president if they’d been allowed to mature.

The Manhattan counts were about actions with fewer national and national-security implications than these cases, but these are no less crimes for having been lower-profile. Almost none of the public defenses of Trump have actually argued that he did not do what he was convicted of; they largely land on the idea that we shouldn’t care, that Trump should effectively be allowed to violate the law because of his imminent return to the Oval Office.

The latest push to have the case dismissed doesn’t center really at all on the relevant facts or the case law, but entirely on the premise that Trump is now past the point of being held criminally responsible, even post-conviction. Trump’s past cannot be erased.

In truth, the mark of a democracy in crisis is not when a leader faces criminal liability, but when a leader cannot. Even if this case truly has to wait until 2029 until it sees a resolution in the form of sentencing — which, as we’ve noted before, is not likely to be jail time in any case — then so be it. We hope, too, that one day Trump really can be held accountable for Jan. 6 and all his other machinations to suspend the peaceful transfer of power, and for his dangerous retention of some of the country’s most sensitive records.

At the very least, we can impose punishment for the crimes for which he was already convicted. Even if it happens four years from now.

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