USA: Trump Appeals to Supreme Court to Overturn Conviction
The president-elect's lawyers are “playing their last card” to prevent Judge Juan Merchan from handing down a sentence on January 10 that could make Trump the first president in U.S. history to take office with a felony criminal record
Days before his official inauguration at the White House, scheduled for January 20, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump (pictured) has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block his conviction in the trial for alleged payments to porn film actress Stormy Daniels.
The court’s decision will be read by Judge Juan Merchan on Friday, January 10, in New York. It will conclude a trial that took place in May 2024, when a New York jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts. It is unlikely that this decision will have a direct impact on the presidency. Judge Merchan has already made it clear that he is “not inclined to sentence a Republican president to prison.” Trump is accused of “falsifying corporate financial and tax documents” and risks becoming the first president in U.S. history who, according to U.S. media, “brings with him” a criminal conviction.
Trump’s lawyers appealed to a higher court on Wednesday, January 8 (Thursday, January 9 in Europe) after a New York court denied their motion. For their part, the Supreme Court justices asked New York prosecutors to “take a position” by Friday, January 10. The lawsuit centered on the illegal concealment of $130,000 that Trump “paid for the silence” of the actress. The indictment alleges that Daniels’s “silence” allowed Trump to “gain an advantage in the 2016 campaign.”
