Stormy Daniels case: Trump appeals his sentence

US President-elect Donald Trump, convicted criminally in New York in the spring for hidden payments to a porn star, has appealed the pronouncement of his sentence, scheduled for Friday, ten days before his inauguration, according to an appeal made public Monday.

Yet another legal maneuver, the lawyers of the one who will be on January 20 the 47^e President of the United States are demanding an “automatic stay” of the proceedings, which provide, under a January 3 order from a Manhattan Criminal Court judge, for a hearing on January 10 at 9:30 a.m. (2:30 p.m. Swiss hours) so that Mr. Trump knows his “sentence”.

It must be pronounced just ten days before his inauguration in Washington, even if the Republican, elected on November 5, will not go to prison.

“The court should cancel the sentencing hearing scheduled for January 10, 2025, and suspend all deadlines in this case until appeals based on President Trump’s immunity have been completely and finally exhausted, and that the case is ultimately abandoned,” write lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove in an appeal dated Sunday.

The latter should be the next numbers two and three of the Ministry of Justice.

New York judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the “Stormy Daniels” trial in the spring, and pronounced the criminal conviction on May 30, has until Monday 2:00 p.m. (8:00 p.m. Swiss time) to give his response, intimate Mes Blanche and Bove. Failing which, they will “examine any emergency appeal”.

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.

Guilty of 34 counts

The Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 counts for hidden payments of $130,000 to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, made just before the November 2016 presidential election.

It is not the checks that he is accused of, but “aggravated accounting falsification to conceal a plot to pervert the 2016 election”, won against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Trump and his entourage have repeatedly denounced a “masquerade”, a “witch hunt” orchestrated according to them by the local justice system in New York State and the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden.

Donald Trump failed to overturn this historic verdict on the basis of presidential immunity, a constitutional principle that the United States Supreme Court had largely expanded on 1^is July, to the advantage of Mr. Trump.

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