American President-elect Donald Trump, convicted criminally in New York in the spring for hidden payments to a porn star, will receive his sentence on January 10, ten days before his inauguration, but he will not go to prison, announced Friday justice.
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The one who will be, on January 20, the 47th president of the United States has denounced a “masquerade”.
Mr. Trump must “appear for sentencing, following his conviction, on January 10, 2025,” ordered Manhattan Court Judge Juan Merchan in a court document dated Friday. He clarified that he was not “inclined to impose a sentence of incarceration” on the former and future tenant of the White House, aged 78.
The New York State magistrate, however, recalled that a firm prison sentence – with a possible committal warrant – was made legally possible by the historic criminal conviction last spring.
The convicted person will have to appear in person in court, at the courthouse in the south of the big New York island of Manhattan, or remotely by video, but he has until Sunday to make his “preference” known.
After six weeks of trial in the middle of the electoral campaign, in an electric climate, Donald Trump was on May 30 the first former American president (2017-2021) to be criminally convicted.
The Manhattan court jury found him guilty of 34 counts for hidden payments to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, made just before the November 2016 presidential election.
He is accused of “aggravated accounting falsification to conceal a plot aimed at perverting the 2016 election” which he won against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“Illegitimate political attack”
Justice concluded that the $130,000 paid to Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was supposed to keep her quiet about a brief sexual encounter in 2006 when Donald Trump was already married to Melania, who was pregnant at the time of their son.
The person concerned denies any sexual relationship.
After months of appeals and the victory in the presidential election on November 5, the Trump camp failed to overturn this historic verdict on the basis of presidential immunity.
This immunity was extended on July 1 by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Under enormous political pressure, Judge Merchan had postponed the sentencing several times since May 30.
In the evening, Donald Trump thundered on his Truth Social network against an “illegitimate political attack which is nothing other than a charade” and once again attacked Judge Merchan, an “extremist partisan” and “without respect for the Constitution”.
The desire of this magistrate to go to the end of the criminal procedure “is a direct attack on the decision of the Supreme Court concerning immunity”, wrote earlier in a press release the spokesperson for Donald Trump, Steven Cheung. He denounced “the witch hunts” orchestrated according to him by the outgoing administration of Joe Biden.
“Prudence, rigor and independence”
Mr. Trump’s lawyers – already named future numbers two, three and four of the Department of Justice – presented this fall yet another appeal against the Manhattan verdict, invoking the presidential status of their client, both 45th and soon 47th president. Without success.
The fact remains that since his resounding re-election, the Republican has seen his criminal justice horizon almost completely clear.
Federal justice has abandoned two criminal proceedings for illegal attempts to reverse the results of the November 2020 presidential election, lost to Joe Biden, and for withholding classified documents after his chaotic departure from the White House.
In civil matters, on the other hand, despite again the argument of immunity, Donald Trump remains liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages in at least three cases judged in New York.
The Stormy Daniels case, investigated and judged by the local courts of New York State, is therefore the only criminal case to reach its conclusion. An unprecedented scenario in American history.
Legal experts believe it is much easier to impose civil liability on a sitting president than criminal liability.
But “the excellent” judge Merchan demonstrated “prudence, rigor and independence” in this case, Professor of Law at the University of Richmond Carl Tobias told AFP.
