MADRID 7 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Judge Juan Merchan, who is leading the case against the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, for alleged bribery of former porn film actress Stephanie Clifford, known as ‘Stormy Daniels’, has rejected this Monday the magnate’s request to postpone the sentencing, scheduled for this Friday, just ten days before the president is inaugurated.
“This court has considered the defendant’s arguments in support of his motion and finds them to be, for the most part, a repetition of arguments he has raised numerous times in the past,” the judge’s ruling reads. Following this decision, Trump’s legal team can appeal this decision before an appeals court in New York.
Hours earlier, the president-elect’s lawyers filed an appeal urging the appeals court to overturn Merchan’s recent rulings that upheld his conviction in the case, while urging the judge to postpone the sentence while he appeals, the television network reported. American CNN.
These legal maneuvers took place on the same day that the US Congress ratified the results of the November presidential elections, in which Trump won. The vote in Congress occurred four years after the assault on the Capitol, which took place on January 6, 2021.
Trump was convicted in April on a total of 34 charges, when he was not even confirmed as an official candidate for the White House. The judge, who postponed the hearing ‘sine die’, held him responsible for falsifying documents to hide a payment of $130,000 to ‘Stormy Daniels’, whom he paid not to talk about an alleged extramarital relationship.
The Supreme Court ruled that former presidents have immunity from prosecution for official acts, noting that evidence related to Trump’s work as president could not be used in the trial. Thus, the magnate’s defense argued that the ruling by the country’s highest court meant that the conviction should be annulled and the accusation dismissed, arguing that the trial included testimonies from former White House staff.