This is John Batch, a conversation with Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online, about the term convicted felon used throughout the campaign by supporters of Kamala Harris and detractors of Donald Trump.

And he explains here why it was important to Judge March on, given the election,

given the fact that Donald Trump will soon be sworn in again as president,

to impose a sentence but no penalty in his Manhattan court.

Why that was important to prosecutor Bragg as well, and he explains. It has to do with the technical detail

of what is or is not a convicted felon. More of this later. But now we move forward to sentencing.

And what happened here is that the Democrats were in a hot panic.

And when I say the Democrats, Merchant is an activist Democrat who contributed to Joe Biden's campaign against Trump in 2020 and whose daughter is an election operative who's done work for Kamala Harris,

quite lucrative work we understand.

So, you know, we're talking about an elected Democratic district attorney

and the person I just described March on is the judge on the case.

They were hot to have Trump sentenced because under the law, even though throughout

the campaign, the Democrats called Trump a convicted felon, technically speaking, one is not a

convicted felon until sentences imposed and the court formally enters the judgment of

conviction on the record. They wanted that to happen before Trump got into office because once he

gets into office, all proceedings in the case would have had to be suspended. So that's why there was this big push to get him sentenced. And the reason I think

that Merchant was willing to make it a no jail, no probation, no fine sentence was to convince the

Supreme Court to allow him to impose it, because if it had been more of a burden on the president's elect and the transition, the court might have said no.