President-elect Donald Trump urged a New York court on Tuesday to overturn his guilty verdict for falsifying business records and to halt the proceedings prior to the sentencing set for Friday.
The appeal to a state court represented Trump’s final attempt to halt a lower court’s determination on Monday that sentencing would proceed on Friday, 10 days before his January 20 inauguration.
In a Monday decision, Justice Juan Merchan refused a request from Trump’s legal team to postpone the sentencing while they challenged two earlier decisions that upheld the Manhattan jury’s May verdict finding Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying documents.
The judge noted that Trump’s demand for a delay amounted largely to “a repetition of the arguments he has raised numerous times in the past.” In scheduling Trump’s sentencing for Friday, Merchan indicated he had no intention of imprisoning Trump.
Merchan stated that an unconditional discharge, placing a guilty verdict on Trump’s record without any fine or probation, would be the most feasible option in light of the upcoming inauguration. Citing presidential immunity and the obligations surrounding Trump’s near swearing-in, his attorneys on Monday morning asserted that Merchan’s plan not to punish Trump was “of no moment.”
“Presidential immunity violations cannot be ignored in favor of a rushed pre-inauguration sentencing,” the lawyers wrote in a court filing. The case originated from a $130,000 payment Trump’s onetime attorney Michael Cohen allegedly made.
Trump, a Republican, defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in that election.
Trump has long insisted that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, pursued the matter in order to damage his 2024 reelection efforts. Bragg has maintained that his office routinely prosecutes felony falsification of business records.
The hush-money case made Trump the first U.S. president, whether incumbent or former, to be both charged with and found guilty of a crime.
Since the jury’s decision, Trump’s lawyers have twice tried without success to get the case dismissed, and now plan to appeal. Merchan had previously dismissed their argument that the U.S. Supreme Court’s July ruling in a different criminal case against Trump, which held that presidents cannot be prosecuted for official actions, required that the hush-money matter be thrown out. Merchan concluded that the accusations in the hush-money case pertained to Trump’s private conduct.
After Trump was reelected, his attorneys argued that having the matter remain pending during his presidency would impair his capacity to govern. Merchan rejected that assertion, writing that setting aside the jury’s verdict would be an insult to the rule of law.
{Matzav.com}