Photo: Charly Triballeau Archives Agence France-Presse President-elect Donald Trump on the eve of his re-election.
Andréa Bambino – Agence France-Presse in New York
Published at 14:36 Updated at 18:43
- United States
The Manhattan prosecutor's office on Tuesday opened the way for a new postponement of the sentence against Donald Trump in the case of hidden payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, a historic criminal case that the future president wants to see thrown into oblivion.
The final word will go to New York judge Juan Mechan, who presided over this trial in the spring that resulted in the first criminal guilty verdict of a former president of the United States.
A decision from the magistrate was expected on Tuesday and could come at any time.
This case is the only one in which a criminal trial has taken place against the Republican, out of the four in which he was charged while being a candidate in the presidential election of November 5 that he won, an unprecedented scenario in history American.
After six weeks of debate, at the end of May, a jury of 12 citizens unanimously found Donald Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying accounting records to hide from voters the payment of $130,000 to the porn star. The aim was to avoid a sex scandal breaking out at the very end of his first successful campaign in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.
The sentence should have been initially handed down on July 11 by Judge Juan Merchan, with the possibility of a fine or prison sentence – an unlikely scenario according to observers. But the magistrate agreed to postpone it a first time to September 18, then to November 26, that is to say in a week, in order to study new appeals from the defense lawyers.
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The latter are now requesting “the suspension and the dismissal [of the case] to avoid that President Trump”, who will take office on January 20, “is prevented from governing”.
On Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, said in a court filing that he would oppose an outright dismissal of the proceedings, but that the issue merited further review, which would result in a new postponement of the sentence.
Bragg even believes that freezing all prosecutions “until the end of the presidential term” of the 47th president of the United States should be an option to “consider.”
Donald Trump’s team immediately saw it as a “total and final victory,” saying that “this baseless trial is frozen.”
Even before Donald Trump was elected, his lawyers had requested that the proceedings be dismissed after a decision by the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, that significantly expanded presidential immunity in July last.
This appeal, on which Judge Merchan must also rule, was filed on the grounds that evidence used by the prosecution relates to official acts during the Republican's first term in the White House (2017-2021).
Donald Trump is already certain that he will be able to bury the prosecutions brought by the federal justice system, in particular the most serious ones concerning his alleged illegal attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Read also
- Trump requests the annulment of his conviction in the Stormy Daniels case
- Back in the White House, can Trump escape justice? ?
“Voters' Verdict”
That's not the case for the Stormy Daniels trial in New York State.
But observers are still calling on the judge and the prosecution to throw in the towel.
“The ultimate democratic verdict on (all) these prosecutions was rendered by the voters,” wrote Supreme Court lawyer Thomas Goldstein in the New York Times.
“Despite the prosecution, more than 75 million people […] voted to send him back to the White House,” he added.
But for the former Attorney Randall Eliason, “the election should not prevent sentencing, in the same way that criminal trials did not prevent Trump's election.”
“The judge can craft a sentence that will not interfere with his presidential duties. It is important from a judicial and historical perspective that the criminal proceedings be completed,” he analyzed on his blog Sidebars.
Since he was elected, Donald Trump has promised to appoint three of his personal lawyers to key positions in the Justice Department, including Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, who defended him in the New York trial.