The president-elect’s sentence will be known in the case of paying bribes to a porn actress. Until the last minute, Trump tried to evade condemnation. On January 20, he assumes the presidency of the United States.
The elected president of the United States, donald trump, will be sentenced on Friday for the criminal conviction derived from the payment of money in exchange for silence to a porn star, a case that for a time overshadowed his bid to reoccupy the White House. The United States Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the ruling in New York state court in Manhattan, rejecting a last-minute request by Trump to detain her 10 days before his inauguration on January 20.
Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the six-week trial last year, has signaled that he does not plan to send Trump to jail or fine him. But granting him unconditional release would put a guilty verdict on Trump’s permanent record. Trump, 78, who has pleaded not guilty, is expected to appear electronically at the hearing. He fought tooth and nail to avoid the spectacle of being forced to appear before a state judge days before returning to the public office he lost four years ago.
“He doesn’t want to be convicted because it’s the official ruling that he’s a convicted felon,” said Cheryl Bader, a law professor at Fordham University in New York. The trial unfolded against the extraordinary backdrop of Trump’s successful campaign to retake the White House. The ruling marks the culmination of the first criminal case brought against a United States president, past or present.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, charged Trump, a Republican, in March 2023 with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the payment of $130,000 from his former lawyer Michael Cohen to adult film star Stormy. Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump, who denied it.
Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in that election. The Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts on May 30. Prosecutors argued that, despite the sordid nature of the allegations, the case was an attempt to corrupt the 2016 election.
Critics of the businessman-turned-politician cited the charges and other legal entanglements he faced to bolster their argument that he was unfit for public office. Trump flipped the script. He argued that the case — along with three other criminal indictments and civil lawsuits accusing him of fraud, defamation and sexual abuse — was an effort by his opponents to use the judicial system against him and harm his re-election campaign. He often lashed out at prosecutors and witnesses, and Merchan ended up fining Trump $10,000 for violating a gag order. On January 3, Trump called the judge a “radical partisan” in a post on his Truth Social platform.
That day, Merchan said overturning the verdict would “undermine the rule of law immeasurably” and wrote that Trump’s behavior during the trial showed a lack of respect for the judiciary.
“The defendant has gone to great lengths to convey on social media and other forums his lack of respect for judges, juries, grand juries and the judicial system as a whole,” Merchan said. Late Thursday, hours before the sentence was imposed, Trump wrote on his social network that he would appeal the case and was confident he would prevail.
Source: Ambito
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