It’s a decision that sounds like a huge victory for Donald Trump. The former US president, who wants to return to the White House, welcomed the decision of a New York judge to postpone until November 26 the pronouncement of his sentence in the case of concealed payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels.
The ruling, issued Friday, means that American voters will not experience the Republican candidate’s punishment when they go to the polls or vote by mail on November 5. “The case should be closed,” the Republican candidate said on his Truth Social platform, saying he had “done nothing wrong.”
As a reminder, at the end of May, at the end of a historic trial, the first criminal trial for a former president of the United States, Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 offenses of falsifying accounting documents, intended to hide, just before his victory in the 2016 presidential election, a payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels. The money had been paid to her so that she would keep quiet about a sexual relationship she said she had with him in 2006, which the person concerned has always denied. Donald Trump appealed immediately, denouncing “a sham” of justice.
“The court is an impartial institution”
“This is not a decision that the Court takes lightly, but it is the decision that, in the eyes of the Court, best serves the interests of justice,” explained Judge Juan Merchan on Friday, to justify the postponement of the sentencing until after the election. The latter had received multiple appeals from Donald Trump’s defense, and had already postponed the sentencing hearing from July 11 to September 18. For the magistrate, “the verdicts (of justice) must be respected so as not to be diluted in the face of the enormity of the next presidential election (…) The court is a fair, impartial and apolitical institution,” he hammered home.
Donald Trump is facing criminal charges in three other cases, but no further trials will take place before the presidential election. On the other hand, Donald Trump has already been found liable in civil cases and ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, including in a defamation suit brought by former newspaper columnist E. Jean Carroll, based on accusations of rape. He has also appealed.
