Trump case marks first criminal conviction of US president as court rejects request to halt sentencing
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump attends a campaign event in Waterloo, Iowa, the United States, on Dec19, 2023. (File photo: Reuters)
NEW YORK— United States President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday for his criminal conviction stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, a case that for a time overshadowed his bid to retake the White House.
The US Supreme Court paved the way on Thursday for the 9.30am ET (1430 GMT) sentencing in New York state court in Manhattan, rejecting a last-minute request by Trump to halt it 10 days before his Jan 20 inauguration.
Justice Juan Merchan, who oversaw the six-week trial last year, has signalled he does not plan to send Trump to jail or to fine him. But by granting an unconditional discharge, he would place a judgment of guilt on Trump’s permanent record.
Trump, 78, who pleaded not guilty, was expected to appear virtually at the hearing.
He fought tooth and nail to avoid the spectacle of being compelled to appear before a state-level judge days before returning to the public office he lost four years ago.
“He doesn’t want to be sentenced because that is the official judgment of him being a convicted felon,” said Cheryl Bader, a law professor at Fordham University in New York.
The trial played out against the extraordinary backdrop of Trump’s successful campaign to retake the White House. The sentencing marks the culmination of the first-ever criminal case brought against a US president, past or present.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, charged Trump, a Republican, in March 2023 with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s US$130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump, who denied it.
Adult-film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, speaks as she departs federal court in the Manhattan borough of New York
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