The judge of Stormy Daniels casein which Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 crimes for paying money to a porn actress to buy her silence, has delayed for a week ruling on a hypothetical annulment of the conviction based on a recent Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity . If Judge Juan Merchan confirms the conviction, the reading of the sentence is scheduled for November 26, just two months before Trump’s inauguration as president. The Republican’s lawyers asked this weekend that Merchan delay his decision while the Manhattan district attorney’s office decides how to proceed now that Trump has been re-elected.
A popular jury convicted Trump in May of all the charges against him in a criminal trial – one of the four brought against the Republican – for falsifying accounting records in his company to conceal the payment of money to Daniels, with the aim of silence a foreseeable scandal, if that extramarital affair had been revealed, which would have been potentially damaging to his electoral expectations in the final stretch of the 2016 campaign, which took him to the White House for the first time.
The Supreme Court, formed to Trump’s liking during his first term – six conservative judges versus three liberal judges – ruled on July 1 that presidents have broad criminal immunity, although not absolute, for acts derived from the exercise of their office. Determining whether Trump’s criminal conduct when he covered up the payment of the bribe to the actress falls within that broad exemption from liability is what Judge Merchan and Manhattan prosecutors assess.
Although the payment of $130,000 to Daniels was prior to his arrival to the presidency, the Republican maintains that prosecutors filled “obvious holes in the investigation” with evidence related to official acts carried out later, already as president, those “official acts” that The Supreme Court considers them subject to immunity. Prosecutors, for their part, have argued that the Stormy Daniels case is based on “totally personal” conduct [sin] “any relationship with official functions of the presidency” of the United States. A single day after the Supreme Court ruling was issued, Trump’s defense managed to delay the reading of the sentence until September 18, which was then extended until the next day the 26th.
Trump’s resounding victory last week appears to have further blurred the likelihood that he will suffer legal consequences despite having been indicted four times, although he has only been tried and convicted in the aforementioned case. One of the cases, that of the confidential documents that he took from the White House and stored in his residence in Mar-a-Lago (Florida), was completely dismissed in mid-July by the judge in charge, also appointed during the first mandate of the Republican, while special prosecutor Jack Smith studies with the Department of Justice how to end the other two federal cases against Trump, considering that criminal cases cannot be pursued against an elected president.
The Georgia election subversion case continues to be delayed by legal fights over the status of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. The other political case, that relating to Trump’s role in the assault on the Capitol, was returned after the Supreme Court’s decision to district judge Tanya Chutkan, who is trying to determine which prosecution accusations can move forward under that broad margin of immunity inherent, according to the Supreme Court, to the exercise of the presidency. It is very likely that the judge’s decision will be appealed until the case returns to the high court again.
From the outset, in a new judicial victory for Trump after a year of setbacks, Chutkan agreed to the prosecutor’s request to suspend the next presentation deadlines, a clear sign that Smith does not want to move forward with the accusation. He has until December 2 to explain in writing how he wants to proceed with the case.
