NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will be sentenced on Friday for his criminal conviction stemming from paying hush money to a porn star, a case that, for a time, overshadowed his attempt to regain power. the White House.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for sentencing at 9:30 a.m. (11:30 a.m. EDT) in New York state court in Manhattan, rejecting a last-minute request from Trump to suspend it 10 days before his death. inauguration on January 20th.
Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the six-week trial last year, signaled he does not plan to send Trump to jail or fine him. But by granting an unconditional discharge, he would place a judgment of guilt on Trump’s permanent record.
Trump, 78, who has pleaded not guilty, is expected to attend the hearing virtually.
He fought tooth and nail to avoid the spectacle of being forced to appear before a state judge days before returning to the public office he lost four years ago.
“He doesn’t want to be convicted because this is the official ruling that he is a convicted felon,” said Cheryl Bader, a law professor at Fordham University in New York.
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The trial unfolded against an extraordinary backdrop of Trump’s successful campaign to retake the White House. The sentence marks the culmination of the first criminal case brought against a US president, past or present.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, charged Trump, a Republican, in March 2023 with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the $130,000 payment made by his former lawyer Michael Cohen to the movie star adults Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump, who denied such an encounter.
Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in that election.
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The Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of all 34 charges on May 30. Prosecutors argued that despite the indecent nature of the allegations, the case was an attempt to corrupt the 2016 election.
Critics of the businessman-turned-politician have cited the charges and other legal entanglements he has faced to bolster their claim that he is unfit for public office.
Trump flipped the script. He argued that the case — along with three other criminal charges and civil lawsuits accusing him of fraud, defamation and sexual abuse — was an effort by opponents to weaponize the justice system against him and harm his election campaign.
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He frequently attacked prosecutors and witnesses, and Merchan ended up fining Trump $10,000 for violating a gag order.
As recently as January 3, Trump called the judge a “radical partisan” in a post on his Truth Social platform.
In a ruling that day, Merchan said that overturning the verdict would “immeasurably undermine the rule of law” and wrote that Trump’s behavior during the trial demonstrated disrespect for the judiciary.
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“The defendant went to great lengths to convey on social media and other forums his lack of respect for judges, juries, grand juries and the judicial system as a whole,” Merchan said.
Late Thursday, hours before the sentence was imposed, Trump wrote on his social media platform that he would appeal the case and was confident he would prevail.
