Judge Juan Merchan must rule this Tuesday on the request for dismissal concerning the conviction of the new President of the United States Donald Trump, for falsification of accounting documents, giving him the possibility of escaping legal proceedings.
He's hitting the mark. Having managed by playing for time to postpone most of his criminal trials until after the election, Donald Trump, declared winner of the presidential election last Wednesday, intends to find himself sheltered from legal proceedings.
A final obstacle nevertheless awaits him this Tuesday, November 12 in New York, before his official return to the White House on January 20: the pronouncement of his sentence in the only one of his four criminal trials, which his lawyers did not succeed to be postponed beyond 2024.
A sentence of up to 4 years in prison
Found guilty on May 30 by New York State courts of “aggravated accounting falsification to conceal a conspiracy to pervert the 2016 election,” he faces, in theory, up to four years in prison.
This case concerns the payment of $130,000, disguised as legal fees, to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, to silence a sexual relationship in 2006, which Donald Trump denies.
But the hypothesis that Judge Juan Merchan imposes a prison sentence on him, in the case of a first criminal conviction, now appears highly improbable in the face of the insurmountable practical difficulties that the incarceration of an elected president and then current president would raise, according to experts.
“Turn in two seconds”
As for the two federal proceedings against him, if Donald Trump's legal horizon brightened spectacularly this summer, it now appears completely clear at least for the four years of his new mandate.
The Republican candidate indicated at the end of October that he wanted, if elected, to “fire in two seconds” the special prosecutor in charge of these two cases, Jack Smith, appointed by the Minister of Justice of the current Democratic administration, Merrick Garland.
The two cases investigated by the special prosecutor focus on Donald Trump's allegedly illicit attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his withholding of classified documents after his departure from the White House.
Now president again, Donald Trump could now either appoint a new Justice Minister who would fire Jack Smith, or simply order his Justice Department to drop the charges.
