A judge in the state of New York suspended for a week the hearing of the case of the president-elect of the United States about the payment for silence to a porn star.
Reuters writes about it.
Judge Juan Mercan delayed until at least Nov. 19 any decision on whether to overturn Trumpʼs conviction because of the US Supreme Courtʼs ruling in July that presidents are immune from prosecution.
By then, prosecutors must provide the judge with new information about whether Donald Trumpʼs re-election to a new term as the US president will result in a conviction.
The ruling came as the judge was set to announce whether Trump could be covered by presidential immunity after the US Supreme Court ruled in July.
The newly elected US president should be sentenced on November 26. But Reuters writes that the date of the sentencing will be postponed, according to lawyers.
Trumpʼs partial immunity
The Supreme Court on July 1 rejected the decision of the Federal Court of Appeals, which previously ruled that Trump does not have the right to presidential immunity in the case of his involvement in the attack on January 6.
Presidents of the United States do have immunity for their official actions, but this does not extend to their personal actions. The courts will now have to determine what Trumpʼs actions were official and what were not.
The case of payments to a porn star
On May 30, 2024, a jury in New York found Trump guilty of all 34 counts in the case of financial fraud during payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Now he faces up to four years in prison.
According to the investigation, before the 2016 election, Trump paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 through a lawyer to keep quiet about having sex with him. The payment was not illegal, but it was framed as Trumpʼs payment to a lawyer for legal services. In New York State, this is considered falsification of reporting.
In 2018, Trumpʼs lawyer Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in the case of forgery. Trump, who held the position of president at the time, was not charged.
In addition to this case, three more were filed against the ex-president of the United States — about the conspiracy to cancel the election results and Trumpʼs role in the storming of the Capitol, about his possession of secret documents and about his alleged attempt to change the results of the presidential election in the state of Georgia in 2020.
Trumpʼs sentence was to be announced on September 18 of this year. However, his lawyers asked for the date to be rescheduled, arguing that sentencing in September could affect his election campaign. Punishing the former president in the midst of his campaign to return to the White House would amount to election interference, they said.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan agreed with this and explained that the court is impartial and apolitical.
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