US President-elect Donald Trump’s lawyers on Monday requested a judge to halt this week’s sentencing in his hush money case, citing plans to appeal a recent ruling that upheld the verdict. Further, his legal team said that they were set to file a petition in state appeals court to overturn judge Juan M Merchan’s decision, which scheduled sentencing for Friday.
Last week, Merchan denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the indictment and overturn the verdict, despite arguments referencing Trump’s imminent return to the White House.
They said that their appeal should automatically trigger a stay, halting the proceedings. If the automatic stay wasn’t granted, they urged Judge Juan M Merchan to impose a pause, delaying the sentencing scheduled for Friday.
In last week’s ruling, Merchan indicated he was unlikely to impose any punishment on Trump, a Republican, despite his historic conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Trump’s sentencing was initially scheduled for July 11 last year, but it was postponed twice at the defense’s request. After his election on November 5, Merchan further delayed the sentencing to allow both the defense and prosecution to evaluate the future direction of the case.
Trump is poised to become the first president to take office while convicted of felony crimes. In a social media post, he warned that allowing the judge’s ruling upholding the May 30 verdict to stand “would be the end of the Presidency as we know it.”
The charges stem from an alleged scheme to conceal a hush money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of his 2016 campaign, aiming to suppress her claims of a past sexual encounter with Trump. He has denied any wrongdoing, saying that Daniels’ allegations were false.
