Shorouk Express
An appeals court judge has rejected Donald Trump’s last-ditch attempt to stop this week’s sentencing hearing in his hush money trial.
The president-elect has desperately fought to return to the White House with a clear record. But after his latest courtroom failures to overturn his conviction and sentence, Trump is set to enter office as the first criminally convicted president in U.S. history.
Moments after a brief hearing with Trump’s attorneys and Manhattan prosecutors on Tuesday, a New York state appellate court judge issued a one-page denial of the president-elect’s latest attempt to avoid his imminent court date.
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced by New York Justice Juan Merchan in Manhattan criminal court on January 10. The president-elect will be inaugurated 10 days later on January 20.
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Merchan is expected to impose a sentence of “unconditional discharge” — meaning a sentence of no jail time, probation or fines — as “the most viable solution” to preserve the jury’s verdict while letting Trump continue to appeal.
Trump’s attorneys argued that Merchan overstepped his jurisdiction when he allowed a sentencing date to move forward while courts were “still grappling” with his defense that presidential “immunity” should shield him from criminal prosecution and even sentencing.
The appellate judge presiding over his emergency motion appeared unconvinced on Tuesday.
New York Justice Ellen Gesmer stressed that Trump’s hush money trial doesn’t involve presidential immunity but the proposed immunity “of a president-elect.”
“Do you have any support for the notion that presidential immunity extends to a president-elect?” Gesmer asked Trump’s criminal defense attorney Todd Blanche.
“There has never been a case like this before,” he replied. “So no.”
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Gesmer pressed Blanche to agree that the “underlying criminal conviction is about unofficial conduct” — outside the bounds of the Supreme Court’s decision on “immunity” that shields presidents from prosecution for “official” actions while in office.
The hush money case involves Trump’s falsification of business records in connection with a scheme to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose story about having sex with Trump threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump’s reimbursements to his then-attorney Michael Cohen, who paid off Daniels, were falsely recorded in accounting records as “legal expenses.”
A jury convicted Trump on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on May 30.
Gesmer rejected Blanche’s comparison of Trump’s hush money case to the two federal criminal cases against the former president, which had not even reached trial before special counsel Jack Smith dismissed them.
“Justice Merchan would have been happy to hold that sentencing in July,” she said. “This proceeding could be concluded before his inauguration.”
