Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan has given himself until Tuesday to decide whether or not to toss the 34 guilty felony verdicts in Donald Trump’s New York hush money case for illegally doctoring his company’s books to obscure payments to Stormy Daniels. The convictions must stand. The U.S. Supreme Court majority ruling from this past summer on presidential immunity for “official acts” has nothing to do with a president signing non-government checks in the Oval Office to cover up his tawdry conduct as a private citizen. Then Merchan must choose a sentence for the guilty Trump, who will spend the next four years in the White House. Based on Trump being a 78-year-old first time offender for nonviolent crimes and weighing the principles of proportionate sentencing and fairness, this is not the sort of thing that should land him a prison sentence. Fines, probation, public service, yes; jail, no. The far more serious federal charges for attempting to steal the 2020 election and hiding classified documents could have merited hard time, but those cases of Special Counsel Jack Smith are going away, as is Smith. Smith just ran out of time, as Trump’s delaying tactics paid off.  Sitting presidents aren’t prosecuted and Trump will be the sitting president starting in 65 days. Perhaps those cases will resume when he leaves office in 2029, but it seems unlikely. There’s also a state case in Georgia about Trump trying to hijack the 2020 election, but that case seems lost at sea, at least for defendant Trump. That doesn’t mean that Trump’s completed New York State case prosecuted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg should also be dropped (we doubt that Gov. Hochul will want to issue a pardon to Trump). Merchan, in upholding the conviction and treating Trump no harsher or no easier than another defendant, must show that the rule of law remains paramount, from the president on down. We read the Supreme Court immunity decision and so did Merchan. But Trump’s criminal defense lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, now slated for the No. 2 and No. 3 jobs in the Justice Department, are trying to stretch the ruling to cover the Stormy payments. No, the facts of the hush money case haven’t changed because of the immunity decision. Likewise, the facts of the case haven’t changed since Trump won a majority of the Electoral College last week. He’s still guilty and he’ll be president. Both apply. Another historic first for Donald Trump. For Merchan to erase the findings of an unanimous jury of 12, which included jurors who voted for Trump in 2020, is to whitewash the record. New York’s new Clean Slate Law takes effect today, so Trump’s felony counts will be automatically sealed eight years after sentencing. That’s in 2032, two presidential elections from now, both of which he is constitutionally ineligible to be a candidate. Love him or hate him, whether you voted for him or against, Donald Trump broke New York State law as fairly determined in a court of law. He’s not going to prison, but to another kind of government housing. His actions earned him the joint titles of convicted felon and president.