Judge Juan Merchan, who is leading the case against US President-elect Donald Trump for allegedly bribing former porn actress Stephanie Clifford, known as ‘Stormy Daniels’, ruled on Monday that the former president does not have presidential immunity in the case, after his legal team tried to dismiss it based on a landmark Supreme Court ruling.
Trump’s defense argued that prosecutors presented evidence during his trial that was protected by the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity, but Merchan said that “the evidence related to the preserved claims relates entirely to unofficial conduct and therefore does not receive immunity protection.”
“If there was an error in the introduction of the challenged evidence, that error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt,” he said in the ruling, reported by the American newspaper ‘The Hill’.
Trump was convicted in April on a total of 34 charges, when he was not even confirmed as the official Republican candidate for the White House. The judge, who postponed indefinitely the hearing in which it will be known whether he will finally be sentenced to prison, accused him of falsifying documents to hide a payment of $130,000 to Daniels, whom he paid to keep quiet about an alleged extramarital affair.
