U.S. President-elect Trump asks New York appellate court to dismiss hush money case before sentencing

NEW YORK, Jan 7 (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump asked a New York appellate court on Tuesday to throw out his conviction on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, and to dismiss the case before his scheduled Friday sentencing.

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

In that ruling, Justice Juan Merchan rejected a request from Trump’s lawyers to delay the sentencing while they appealed two of the judge’s previous rulings upholding the Manhattan jury’s May guilty verdict on 34 felony counts of falsifying records. The judge called Trump’s delay request mostly “a repetition of the arguments he has raised numerous times in the past.”

In scheduling Trump’s sentencing for Friday, Merchan said he was not inclined to send Trump to prison. 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.

In a court filing on Tuesday with the Appellate Division, Trump’s lawyers said that a sitting president’s immunity from prosecution extends to the transition period between winning the election and inauguration. They asked the court to block sentencing while his appeal plays out.

“Justice Merchan is without authority under the law to proceed to sentencing while President Trump exercises his federal constitutional right to challenge these rulings,” Trump’s lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote.

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 Manhattan District Attorney Alvin 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.

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.