In the ongoing saga of Donald Trump’s courtroom drama and the philosophical questions surrounding the idea that a convicted felon could hold the office of President of the United States, one thing remains unchanged: He’s going to fight tooth and nail to keep the 34 felony count case against him in New York from being finalized.

There are plenty of reasons for that, but one overarching cause of his distress is that it’s a state, rather than federal, case. That may seem counterintuitive, since a federal court has more authority than a state court.

But a president can pardon any conviction — theoretically even their own — in a federal case. Not so with a state conviction, according to Article II of the Constitution. In fact, state crimes are one of the only exceptions to the president’s pardon power, the other two being that they can’t pardon someone in a private civil lawsuit and they can’t pardon someone (even themselves) for impeachment.

All three of these exceptions are important in Trump’s case.

Obviously Trump’s plan all along was to get elected, then pardon himself for anything he was convicted of. He said as much publicly. But of the 4 indictments he faced in New York, Georgia, Florida, and Washington, D.C., only two were federal: Florida and D.C.

As you’ve no doubt read by now, those cases have been wound down since Trump “won” the election.* After all, what would be the point, after Trump was elected, or spending taxpayer money to continue a prosecution that would inevitably end in Trump simply vacating the result?

The two state cases, however, remain. There is simply no further remedy for Trump in the New York case. Regardless of what you’ve read already about Judge Juan Merchan’s ruling that he would be sentenced, but not face any real consequences, the fact is, the convictions will remain on his record, even if he doesn’t get so much as probation. In less than a week, Donald Trump will be officially a convicted and sentenced felon.

In Georgia, Trump was slightly more successful in derailing the proceedings, finally getting District Attorney Fani Willis excused from the case for the “appearance of impropriety.” But the conservative-majority Georgia Court of Appeals in that case didn’t throw out the whole proceeding. It will instead be referred to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council for reassignment.

That means that it’s not just the New York case that Trump has to worry about being not just convicted for, but sentenced. In the New York case, the means by which Trump aided his own election in 2016 were nebulous, or they would have been the focus of the charges. Instead, he was convicted on financial crimes, and the fact that he used those crimes to aid him while seeking office was relegated to merely a factor in whether to pursue the financial charges as felonies.

But in the Georgia case, Trump is said to have “knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome” of the 2020 presidential election. Corrupting or perverting the democratic process is a little more serious than paying off a sex partner to keep them quiet about your affair.

Trump has been desperate to find a way to get the Georgia charges dismissed not just for the same state vs. federal reasons as New York, but because the Georgia case hinges on a recorded phone call of Donald Trump doing exactly what he’s charged with: Pressuring GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “to find 11,780 votes” in the state that would overturn the results in Georgia and hand the state to Trump.

It could very well be the case that, despite the fact that Judge Merchan has signaled in New York that his sentence will be an “unconditional discharge” — a ruling that imposes no penalties but leaves the felony convictions on the record — his sentencing on January 10 will not serve as precedent for any potential outcome in the Georgia case.

So in the interest of non-partisan fairness, here are the wins and losses for both sides in Judge Merchan’s ruling that Trump will be sentenced before Inauguration Day:

For pro-Trump forces including members of Congress and his legal team, the unconditional discharge is, legally, the best outcome they could have hoped for short of having the convictions thrown out. They will continue to try to do that, but because their only argument is the limited presidential immunity granted by the Supreme Court for “official acts” of the president, they can’t prevail on Constitutional grounds. All of the convictions are for crimes committed while Donald Trump was not the president.

For those who oppose Trump, the unconditional discharge at least leaves Trump a convicted felon, whose very convictions in this case could be used as evidence against him in future cases, including the Georgia case. And the fact that the Georgia case hasn’t been thrown out despite a judge’s finding of prosecutorial misconduct means they can still hold out hope that not only will Trump be convicted again, but that he might face actual consequences for his election interference and attempt to overthrow democracy.

*Political Flare is not an election-denying source. There are significant irregularities in the 2024 election that have yet to be explained, so for now it gets an asterisk.