Keystone-SDA
The United States Supreme Court on Thursday rejected US President-elect Donald Trump’s appeal against his sentence in the Stormy Daniels case. The verdict will thus be known as planned on Friday in New York, ten days before his return to the White House.
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January 10, 2025 – 02:34
(Keystone-ATS) Donald Trump was convicted on May 30 in this case of hidden payments to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels of “aggravated accounting falsification to conceal a conspiracy 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 at 9:30 a.m. local (3:30 p.m. in Switzerland).
After several unsuccessful appeals, the lawyers of the president-elect, who will take office on January 20, seized 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.
-Five judges against four
By a majority of five votes to four, those of the three progressive judges and two of the conservatives, the supreme 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 sentencing will place on the responsibilities of the president-elect is relatively minor in view of the court’s announced intention to pronounce a ‘dispensation of sentence’ after a brief virtual hearing.” 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 major public interest in the sentencing taking place,” he argued, recalling that Judge Merchan “took exceptional measures to minimize the burden on the accused,” including by announcing that he would not sentence him to prison.
None provided by Trump
Donald Trump “provided no factual evidence to support his assertion that his duties as president-elect would virtually prevent him from attending a hearing that will likely last no more than an hour,” the statement also said. 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. Mr. Trump has always denied having a relationship with the actress.
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.
