Trump’s sentencing suspended, his camp claims ‘decisive victory’

New York justice suspended sentencing against Donald Trump in a historic trial on Friday, granting his defense time to submit new arguments, a decision presented by the president-elect’s camp as a “decisive victory”.

Donald Trump was found criminally guilty in May of concealed payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Since then, the former president was re-elected on November 5.

The sentencing, after already several postponements, was to take place on November 26.

Manhattan court judge Juan Merchan authorized the lawyers of the 45th and soon-to-be 47th American president to file an appeal before December 2 to have the entire procedure and trial canceled.

The magistrate also ordered that the prosecution render its conclusions before December 9.

Which means that Judge Merchan could then set a date and pronounce his sentence in December and therefore before January 20 when Donald Trump enters the White House.

A possible scenario in law but very hypothetical in reality.

In the meantime, the sentencing, postponed twice since July, has been “adjourned”.

The Trump team went so far as to salute a “decisive victory” by castigating “the bogus Manhattan affair now completely suspended”.

For the first time in American history, a former president was found criminally guilty of “aggravated accounting falsification to conceal a plot to pervert the 2016 election”.

At the end of six weeks of an unprecedented trial, a popular jury validated against Donald Trump, 78, 34 offenses of concealing from American voters the payment of 130,000 dollars to the actress and producer of X-rated films Stormy Daniels.

Sex scandal

The goal, with the help of people close to Mr. Trump, was to prevent a sex scandal — a brief relationship that allegedly took place in 2006, which the person concerned denies — from breaking out at the very end of his victorious presidential campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg opened the way on Tuesday for this third postponement.

This elected magistrate of the Democratic Party, target of Donald Trump and the Republicans for years, had written that he would oppose an outright cancellation of the procedure, but that this deserved to be examined.

Going in the direction of the defense, Alvin Bragg even recognized that the freezing of all prosecutions “until the end of the presidential term” of Donald Trump, on January 20, 2029, should be considered.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers, including Todd Blanche and Emil Bove who have just been named future numbers 2 and 3 at the Department of Justice, demanded “the suspension and dismissal (of the case) to prevent President Trump”in two months, “not be prevented from governing”.

Verdict “democratic”

The defense is based on a historic decision by the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, which considerably extended presidential immunity on July 1.

According to the Trumpist camp, the evidence used by the prosecution during the trial relates to official acts during the billionaire’s first term in the White House (2017-2021).

Of the four criminal proceedings against him, this case, which falls under local New York justice, and not federal, is the only one in which a trial was held. The Republican still won in the presidential election on November 5 against Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris.

An unprecedented scenario in the history of American democracy.

Donald Trump is already certain of being able to bury the proceedings initiated by the federal courts against him, in particular the heaviest on his alleged illegal attempts to overturn the results of the November 2020 presidential election which he lost to Joe Biden.

For two weeks, experts have called on New York justice to throw in the towel due to “ultimate democratic verdict on (all) these prosecutions rendered by the voters” on November 5, according to a lawyer specializing in the Supreme Court, Thomas Goldstein, in the New York Times.

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