Appellate judge skeptical toward Trump bid to halt hush money sentencing By Reuters

By Luc Cohen and Jack Queen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Donald Trump’s lawyer urged an appellate judge during a hearing on Tuesday to halt the U.S. president-elect’s scheduled Friday sentencing for his conviction on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, but the judge signaled skepticism.

The request made by Trump to the Appellate Division, a mid-level state appeals court, represented a last-ditch effort to block the trial judge’s decision on Monday to proceed with the sentencing, which is scheduled for 10 days before the presidential inauguration. 

At the hearing in Manhattan, Associate Justice Ellen Gesmer appeared skeptical of Trump lawyer Todd Blanche’s argument that a sitting president’s immunity from prosecution extends to the transition period between winning the election and inauguration. 

“Do you have any support for the notion that presidential immunity extends to a president elect?” Gesmer asked.

Blanche replied, “There has never been a case like this before, so no.”

But Blanche raised the prospect of Justice Juan Merchan, the trial judge, imposing a prison sentence that extended past the Jan. 20 inauguration.

In his Monday ruling, Merchan said he was not inclined to send Trump to prison over his May conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

The judge said a sentence of unconditional discharge, effectively putting a judgment of guilt on his record without a fine or probation, would be the most practical approach given Trump’s looming return to the presidency. 

Gesmer also asked a lawyer for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which brought the case, to address Trump’s argument that the sentencing would interfere with the presidential transition.

Steven Wu, the state lawyer, said Merchan had addressed those issues by scheduling sentencing before the inauguration, by allowing Trump to appear virtually and by indicating he would not send Trump to prison.

“After he is inaugurated, it will be much more difficult to call a sitting president in for a state sentencing,” Wu said. “The sentencing has to happen at some point.”

Gesmer said she would rule on the decision later.

‘I DID NOTHING WRONG’

In an apparent reference to Merchan, Trump said a “crooked judge” in New York was complicating a smooth transition.

“Remember, this is a man that said he wants the transition to be smooth,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday before the hearing began. “Well, you don’t do the kind of things. You don’t have a judge working real hard to try and embarrass you, because I did nothing wrong.”

The case stemmed from a $130,000 payment that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she said she had a decade earlier with Trump, who denies it. Trump, a Republican, defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in that election.

Trump has argued that Bragg, a Democrat, brought the case to harm his 2024 election bid. Bragg has said that his office routinely brings felony falsification of business records charges. 

The hush money case made Trump the first U.S. president – sitting or former – to be charged with a crime and also the first to be convicted.

Since the verdict, his lawyers have made two unsuccessful attempts to have the case tossed. In scheduling Trump’s sentencing for Friday, Merchan rejected a request from Trump’s lawyers to delay the sentencing while they appealed those rulings.

Merchan previously rejected their argument that the U.S. Supreme Court’s July decision in a separate criminal case against Trump that presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts meant the hush money case must be dismissed. Merchan ruled that the hush money case concerned Trump’s personal conduct.

After Trump won the November election, his lawyers argued that having the case hang over him while serving as president would impede his ability to govern. Merchan denied that bid, writing that overturning the jury’s verdict would be an affront to the rule of law.