New York Judge Juan Merchan postponed his decision on the legality of Donald Trump’s historic spring criminal conviction in the case of hidden payments to porn star Stormy Daniels until November 19 at the earliest. , we learned from the court.
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The judge was expected to rule Tuesday on a defense request to throw out the entire proceeding, after the U.S. Supreme Court significantly expanded presidential immunity on June 1.is last July.
Donald Trump was convicted in this case, but the judge has not yet pronounced the sentence and the election of the Republican to the White House could also suspend the entire procedure.
Donald Trump did not have to appear Tuesday.
The appeal was filed before his re-election on November 5, on the grounds that evidence used by the prosecution relates to official acts during the Republican’s first term in the White House (2017-2021).
But even if the judge rejects the request, the attacks on this trial, followed by the media around the world last spring, are far from over.
And “even if [le juge] Merchan pronounces sentence” as planned on November 26, “his execution, whether prison, home detention, community service or a fine, will have to wait until appeals are exhausted and Trump is not no longer in office,” in 2029, wrote former prosecutor Randall Eliason on his blog.
Indicted in four different criminal investigations, including one before federal justice in Washington for his allegedly illicit attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election, the Republican has succeeded for months in delaying the proceedings. His re-election now almost completely clears his judicial horizon.
“Court of Opinion”
According to several American media, special prosecutor Jack Smith, who investigated the case on the November 2020 election, and the Department of Justice have initiated discussions with a view to stopping federal prosecutions, which Donald Trump could bury a time at the White House on January 20, 2025.
This is not the case for the trial of the Stormy Daniels affair, which took place before the courts of the State of New York.
After six weeks of debate, a jury of 12 citizens found Donald Trump guilty of 34 crimes of accounting falsification to hide from voters the payment of $130,000 to the porn star, in order to avoid a sex scandal at the very end of his 2016 presidential campaign, ultimately winning against Hillary Clinton.
The sentence, which can range from a fine to prison, should first have been pronounced on July 11 by the judge, but he agreed to postpone it for the first time to September 18, then to November 26, at the request Donald Trump’s lawyers.
All observers now expect that the defense will seek to have the charges dropped or at least the proceedings frozen, so as not to disrupt Donald Trump’s second term.
Donald Trump’s former Justice Minister, Bill Barr, called for all charges to be dropped, saying they had been “brought for political purposes and were widely publicized and dismissed in court.” public opinion.
In an editorial, the Kansas City Star on the contrary called on Judge Merchan to do “the unthinkable, force an elected president to take the oath of office from a prison cell,” to send “an unequivocal message: the rule of law still applies in America.”
Science fiction in the eyes of former New York prosecutor and law professor at Pace University in New York, Bennett Gershman, because the sentence, if it involves prison, “will not be carried out on day it is pronounced, nor Trump handcuffed and taken to the cell.
