(New York) The President-elect of the United States Donald Trump, criminally convicted for hidden payments to a porn star, once again failed before the New York courts to postpone the pronouncement of his sentence scheduled for Friday, ten days before his inauguration, a court document said Tuesday.
The day after a refusal on Monday before Judge Juan Merchan, who must deliver this sentence, Donald Trump’s lawyers pleaded Tuesday, during a hearing at the New York Court of Appeal, for the procedure to be frozen , in yet another attempt to delay the deadline.
According to a court document, an appeals court judge rejected the request shortly after listening to their arguments, based primarily on presidential immunity.
Unless a new appeal is successful, Donald Trump’s sentence must therefore still be pronounced at a hearing on January 10 at 9:30 a.m. (9:30 a.m. Eastern time). But Judge Merchan has already ruled out a prison sentence, “impossible to implement”, and given the future tenant of the White House the possibility of appearing in person or virtually.
Despite these adjustments, announced on Friday, Donald Trump’s lawyers have increased their appeals to prevent the hearing from taking place, which will have a strong symbolic value.
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 convicted by the criminal justice system.
A jury of 12 citizens unanimously found him guilty of 34 counts of accounting falsification to hide from voters the payment of $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels, in order to avoid a sex scandal at the at the very end of his first victorious campaign in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump, who has denied any sexual relationship with the actress, has always denounced a political trial hatched by a court in the hands of his adversaries.
He managed to escape any trial in the three other cases in which he was charged, including the most serious in federal justice for his allegedly illegal attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election lost against Joe Biden.
