NEW YORK: A New York judge is set to decide this week whether President-elect Donald Trump’s criminal conviction on charges involving hush money paid to a porn star should be overturned in light of the US Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity.
Judge Juan Merchan said he would make his decision by Tuesday. It’s the first of two key choices the judge must make after Trump wins the Nov. 5 election. Mercan must also decide whether to proceed with Trump’s sentencing on Nov. 26, as currently scheduled. Legal experts have said that conviction is unlikely to happen before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
A Merchan ruling in favor of Trump on the immunity issue or a delay in sentencing would clear the way for him to return to the White House largely without any of the four criminal cases that once seemed to threaten his re-election aspirations the White House.
U.S. Justice Department officials are evaluating how to close the two federal criminal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith against Trump over his longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president. A separate case in Georgia involving state criminal charges related to Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss remains deadlocked.
Trump, 78, has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing in all four cases, which he has portrayed as political prosecutions by allies of Democratic President Joe Biden aimed at derailing his campaign.
“It is now clear that the American people want an immediate end to the weaponization of our justice system,” Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Chung said in a statement Friday.
Trump in May became the first US president to be convicted of a crime when a Manhattan jury found him guilty of state charges of falsifying business records to cover up a potential sex scandal shortly before his first presidential victory in 2016. Trump has vowed to appeal the conviction after conviction.
His lawyers argued the case should be thrown out after the Supreme Court ruled on immunity.
The Supreme Court, in a ruling stemming from one of two Smith v. Trump cases, ruled that presidents have immunity from prosecution involving their official acts and that juries cannot be presented with evidence of official acts in trials for personal conduct. It was the first time the court recognized any degree of presidential immunity from prosecution.
Trump’s lawyers said the jury that convicted Trump received evidence from prosecutors about his social media posts as president and heard testimony from former aides about conversations that took place in the White House during his 2017-2021 term.
Prosecutors in the office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling had no bearing on the case, which they said involved “completely unprofessional conduct.” The Supreme Court in its decision did not find immunity for unofficial acts of a president.
“Even if the judge finds that some of the evidence should not have been admitted, it would not change the outcome of the jury’s verdict, and therefore the court will not dismiss the case on that basis,” said professor at New York Law School. Anna Kominsky said.
Even if Merchan allows the conviction to stand, experts expect Trump’s lawyers to ask the judge to delay the sentencing. Trump faces up to four years in prison after being convicted of 34 felonies. Legal experts have said that while lesser penalties such as fines or probation are more likely, a prison sentence would not be out of the question.
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