Supreme Court rejects Donald Trump’s request to suspend sentencing in New York

The Supreme Court of the United States rejected, Thursday, January 9, Donald Trump’s appeal against the pronouncement of his sentence Friday in New York, which will therefore be held as planned, ten days before his return to the White House.

Donald Trump was found guilty on May 30 in this case of hidden payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels of “aggravated accounting falsification to conceal a plot to pervert the 2016 election”. An infamous first for a former American president and now for an elected president.

The pronouncement of his sentence, postponed many times, was finally set for January 3 by Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the proceedings, for Friday January 10 at 9:30 a.m. local time (3:30 p.m. in France).

After several unsuccessful appeals, the lawyers of the president-elect, who will take office on January 20, petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States on Tuesday to ask it to urgently suspend the procedure in order to“prevent a serious injustice and an attack on the presidential institution and the functioning of the federal government”.

By a majority of five votes to four, those of the three progressive judges and two of the conservatives, the Court notably considered that Donald Trump could still appeal his conviction through the ordinary channels before the courts of the State of New York.

Furthermore, “the burden that the pronouncement of the sentence will place on the responsibilities of the president-elect is relatively minor in view of the intention announced by the court to pronounce a “dispensation of sentence” after a brief virtual hearing”.

“Exceptional measures” in favor of the accused

The Supreme Court thus accepts the arguments presented by the Manhattan prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, who had asked it to reject this final appeal by Donald Trump.

“There is a significant public interest in sentencing taking place”he argued, recalling that Judge Merchan “took exceptional measures to minimize the burden on the accused”including announcing that he would not sentence him to prison.

Donald Trump “failed to provide any factual support for his assertion that his duties as president-elect would virtually prevent him from attending a hearing that is unlikely to last more than an hour”also noted the prosecutor who convicted the ex-president.

The case concerns hidden payments of $130,000, in the home stretch of the 2016 presidential election against Hillary Clinton, to Stormy Daniels, so that she would keep quiet about a sexual encounter ten years earlier. A relationship that Mr. Trump has always denied.

Of the four criminal proceedings targeting Donald Trump, this case is the only one in which a trial was held for the man who was then a candidate in the presidential election which he won, an unprecedented scenario in American history.