Donald Trump, who is expected to succeed Joe Biden on January 20, was convicted last year of paying a bribe and a sum of money in an attempt to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels, porn star.
THE Donald Trump’s lawyerswho seek by all means to prevent the pronouncement of his sentence in the Stormy Daniels affair before his inauguration on January 20, have asked Tuesday at the New York appeals court to cancel on conviction in the name of presidential immunity.
The first president in the history of the United States to be criminally convicted, Donald Trump should theoretically receive his sentence on Friday. He was convicted last May by a Manhattan jury of 34 counts of paying a $130,000 bribe to buy the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels during the election campaign. from 2016.
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Judge Juan Merchan said Monday that he did not intend to sentence Donald Trump to a prison term because of his imminent return to the White House, but he rejected a request from the president-elect’s lawyers to obtain the postponement of the sentencing – which would amount to burying the case – as they have not provided any new evidence to support their request.
Waiting for the decision to be rendered
As a last resort, lawyers turned to the New York Court of Appeals to request that Donald Trump’s conviction be overturned outright, citing the fact that this case would disrupt his inauguration and violate presidential immunity, of which the United States Supreme Court recently provided a fairly extensive reading.
“Violations of presidential immunity cannot be ignored in favor of hasty sentencing before the inauguration,” they wrote in a court filing.
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Juan Merchan has rejected this argument in the past, emphasizing that the payment of the bribe was not an official act and that Donald Trump could therefore be prosecuted in his personal capacity. The magistrate also considered that annulling the jury’s verdict would constitute a serious breach of the rule of law.
The New York Court of Appeals did not say when it would issue its decision.
