Donald Trump maintains his innocence that he did not fabricate financial business records to conceal a $130,000 bribe paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

The Republican politician was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection to the 2016 payout in May 2024. Prosecutors allege that he agreed to hide the payment as a legal fee paid to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen.

On Friday (Jan. 3), New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the case. As a result of the ruling, the president-elect will be sentenced on Jan. 10, just 10 days before his inauguration. “While this Court as a matter of law must not make any determination on sentencing prior to giving the parties and Defendant an opportunity to be heard, it seems proper at this juncture to make known the Court's inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration, a sentence authorized by the conviction but one the People concede they no longer view as a practicable recommendation,” wrote Merchan.

The GOP-backed leader unleashed a fiery response to the outcome of the legal battle on Truth Social, a Twitter-like platform founded by Trump in 2022. In one post published on Saturday (Jan. 4), he said, “I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made-up charge by a corrupt judge who is just doing the work of the Biden/Harris Injustice Department, an attack on their political opponent, ME!”

The twice-impeached political figure was steadfast in defending himself as he wrote, “A legal expense was called, on the books, a legal expense. There was nothing else it could have been called. This was the so-called falsifying of records. I was hiding nothing; everything was out in the open for all to see.”

Furthermore, in a follow-up message to supporters, he declared that the vilification of his public image was a political scheme orchestrated by the Democratic Party. “There has never been a president who was so evilly and illegally treated as I. Corrupt Democrat judges and prosecutors have gone against a political opponent of a president, ME, at levels of injustice never seen before,” he proclaimed.

Trump suggested that the hatred of him was tethered to his “political ideology to ‘MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,’” and that a “mockery” of the justice system has been made by his conviction. When he is sworn in on Jan. 20, he will become the become the nation’s first president found guilty of felony crimes.