The judge who will decide whether Trump’s hush money conviction can be resisted by Reuters
Written by Luc Cohen
NEW YORK – A New York judge is expected to decide this week whether President-elect Donald Trump’s conviction on charges involving hush money paid to a sex star should be overturned in light of the United States Supreme Court’s July ruling on the president’s immunity.
Justice Juan Merchan said he will make his decision on Tuesday. It is the first of two important decisions the jury must make after Trump’s election victory on Nov. 5. Merchan must also decide whether to proceed with sentencing Trump on Nov. 26 as currently scheduled. Legal experts say a conviction is now unlikely to happen before Trump’s January 20 inauguration.
A decision in favor of Merchan by Trump on the question of conviction or delay of sentence will pave the way for him to return to the White House especially without being caught by any of the four criminal cases that have appeared to threaten his ambitions to return to the White House.
US Justice Department officials are considering how to drop the two criminal charges brought against Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith because of its longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president. A separate case in Georgia involving federal criminal charges related to Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election remains in limbo.
Trump, 78, pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing in all four cases, which he characterized as political persecution by supporters of Democratic President Joe Biden designed to derail his campaign.
“It is now clear that the American people want an immediate end to the use of weapons in our justice system,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement on Friday.
Trump in May became the first US president to be convicted when a jury in Manhattan found him guilty of federal charges of falsifying business records to cover up a potential sex scandal shortly before his first presidential victory in 2016. Trump vowed to appeal the case. conviction after conviction.
His lawyers argued that the case should be dismissed following the Supreme Court’s decision.
The Supreme Court, in a decision taken in one of Smith’s two cases against Trump, ruled that presidents are immune from prosecution involving their official acts, and that jurors cannot be presented with evidence of official acts in personal conduct trials. It was the first time the court recognized any level of presidential immunity from prosecution.
Trump’s lawyers said the judge who convicted Trump was shown evidence by prosecutors about his social media posts as president and heard testimony from former aides about conversations that took place in the White House during his 2017-2021 term.
Prosecutors from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling was unrelated to the case, which they said involved “absolutely illegal conduct.” The Supreme Court in its decision did not find immunity for illegal acts of the president.
“Even if the judge finds that some of the evidence should not have been presented, it would not change the outcome of the judge’s decision, and the court will not overturn it that way,” said the New York Law School professor. Anna Cominsky said.
Even if Merchan allows the conviction to stand, experts expect Trump’s lawyers to ask the judge to delay the sentencing. Trump faces up to four years in prison after being convicted on 34 counts. Legal experts say that while lesser penalties such as fines or probation are common, a prison sentence would not be impossible.
