US President-elect Donald Trump, convicted criminally in New York in the spring for hidden payments to a pornography star, failed on Monday to postpone the pronouncement of his sentence. The latter is scheduled for Friday, ten days before his inauguration.
In yet another legal maneuver, the lawyers of the man who will be the 47th President of the United States of America on January 20 have demanded since Sunday evening, in an appeal before the Manhattan public prosecutor’s office, an “automatic suspension” of the criminal proceedings. .
This provides, under a January 3 order from a judge of a court in the State of New York for the jurisdiction of Manhattan, that the sentence against Donald Trump be pronounced at a hearing on January 10. January at 9:30 a.m. (2:30 p.m. in Switzerland).
It is therefore on this date, already postponed many times, that Mr. Trump will in principle know his sentence, even if the Republican billionaire re-elected on November 5 will not a priori go to prison.
Immunity appeals
“The guilty party’s appeal to suspend the proceedings is rejected, including the sentencing scheduled for January 10,” wrote Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the Stormy Daniels trial last spring, in an order made public Monday evening.
In their argument, Mr. Trump’s lawyers had ordered the magistrate to “cancel the sentencing hearing scheduled for January 10, 2025 and [de] suspend all deadlines in this case until appeals based on President Trump’s immunity have been completely and finally exhausted and the case is ultimately dismissed.”
These two New York counsel, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, are tipped by the president-elect to be the next numbers two and three at the Department of Justice.
To facilitate Judge Merchan’s decision, the head of the Manhattan public prosecutor’s office, prosecutor Alvin Bragg who investigated the entire case, requested Monday that “the court reject the guilty party’s request and pronounce the sentence, as planned, on January 10 “.
Aggravated accounting falsification
After six weeks of trial in the middle of the electoral campaign, in an electric climate, Donald Trump on May 30 became the first former American president (2017-2021) to be criminally convicted.
The popular jury of the Manhattan court found him guilty of 34 counts for hidden payments of $130,000 to a pornographic film star, Stormy Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, made just before the presidential election in November 2016.
It is not the checks to conceal an alleged sexual relationship that the billionaire is accused of, but “aggravated accounting falsification to conceal a plot aimed at perverting the 2016 election”, according to the courts.
Mr. Trump and his entourage have repeatedly denounced a “masquerade”, a “witch hunt” orchestrated according to them by the New York justice system and the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden.
Donald Trump had already failed in December to overturn this historic guilty verdict, arguing his presidential immunity, a constitutional principle that the Supreme Court of the United States had greatly expanded on July 1, to the advantage of the former and future president. .
This article was automatically published. Sources: ats / afp
