Former US President Donald Trump sits in a courtroom during his money laundering trial in Manhattan Criminal Court on April 26, 2024 in New York.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
Lawyers of the newly elected president Donald Trump tried to block his schedule sentencing later this week ua New York criminal bribe case, according to the new request of the court.
Trump’s lawyers told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan in a motion released Monday that they will appeal his ruling denying their efforts to dismiss the criminal case.
The motion argues that the appeal should automatically delay the sentencing, which is scheduled for Friday, and that if Merchan disagrees, he should still grant Trump an immediate stay pending the outcome of the appeal. That appeal could take months to resolve.
Trump was convicted of 34 counts of the indictment for falsifying business documents in May, in connection with the payment of secret money to a porn star in 2016. Stormy Daniels shortly before the presidential elections of that year.
Merchan said last week that he was not inclined to sentence Trump to prison in the case, and also suggested that he would impose a sentence that included neither probation nor a fine.
That same day, Merchan rejected arguments that he should dismiss the case in light of a US Supreme Court ruling that presidents have presumptive immunity from prosecution for acts while in the White House, and because of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
In a statement on Monday, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said: “Today, President Trump’s legal team took action to end the illegal sentence in the Manhattan prosecutors’ witch hunt.”
“The Supreme Court’s landmark immunity decision, the New York State Constitution and other established legal precedents mandate that this baseless fraud be immediately dismissed,” Cheung said.
On January 20, Trump is scheduled to take the presidential oath for his second non-consecutive term in the White House.
