Trump to be sentenced days before his inauguration in hush money case
President-elect Donald Trump is set to be sentenced in his hush money case just days before he returns to the White House.
Judge Juan Merchan’s decision to reject Trump’s bid to have the case tossed means he will be the first US president convicted of felony crimes to serve.
The New York judge on Friday set Trump’s sentencing for January 10 – ten days before Inauguration Day.
But Merchan indicated that Trump will not be jailed, and that prosectuors agreed with that decision.
Trump will not appear in court in person, but rather virtually.
Merchan added that there was ‘no legal impediment to sentencing’ Trump and that it was ‘incumbent’ on him to do so before the president-elect is sworn into office.
Justice can be served ‘only by bringing finality to this matter’, the judge said.
A jury in May found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records around a $130,000 payment his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to porn star Stormy Daniels leading up to the 2016 presidential election to silence her on an alleged affair.
At the time, Trump became the first former US president to be convicted of crimes, and after winning the November election, he became the first to be voted into office following a criminal conviction.
Trump’s team argued in their motion to dismiss that his election victory called for his conviction to be vacated.
‘This court finds that neither the vacatur of the jury’s verdicts nor dismissal of the indictment are required by the Presidential immunity doctrine, the Presidential Transition Act or the Supremacy Clause,’ Merchan wrote.
Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung again said that the case should be dismissed.
‘There should be no sentencing, and President Trump will continue fighting against these hoaxes until they are all dead,’ stated Cheung.
Merchan’s ruling settles the issue that had been going back-and-forth for two months between Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Trump’s lawyers.
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