Judge Juan Merchan, who is leading the case against US President-elect Donald Trump for alleged bribery of former porn actress Stephanie Clifford, known as ‘Stormy Daniels’, has rejected this Monday the tycoon’s request to postpone the sentencing, scheduled for this Friday, just ten days before he is sworn in as president.
“This court has considered the defendant’s arguments in support of his motion and finds that they are, for the most part, a repetition of arguments he has raised numerous times in the past,” reads the judge’s ruling. After this decision, Trump’s legal team can appeal this decision before a New York appeals court.
Hours earlier, the president-elect’s lawyers filed an appeal urging the appeals court to overturn Merchan’s recent rulings that upheld his conviction in this case, while urging the judge to postpone the sentence while he appeals, according to the American television network CNN.
These legal maneuvers have taken place on the same day that the US Congress has ratified the results of the November presidential elections, in which Trump won. The vote in Congress has taken place four years after the assault on the Capitol, which took place on January 6, 2021.
Trump was convicted in April on a total of 34 charges, when he was not even confirmed as an official candidate for the White House. The judge, who postponed the hearing ‘sine die’, accused him of falsifying documents to hide a payment of $130,000 to ‘Stormy Daniels’, whom he paid so that she would not talk about an alleged extramarital relationship.
The Supreme Court ruled that former presidents have immunity from prosecution for official acts, saying evidence related to Trump’s work as president could not be used in the trial. Trump’s defense argued that the ruling by the country’s highest court meant the conviction should be overturned and the indictment dismissed, arguing that the trial included testimony from former White House staff.
