By Luc Cohen and Jack Queen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A New York appellate court on Tuesday denied President-elect Donald Trump’s bid to halt his sentencing on Friday for his conviction on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star.
Trump’s request to the Appellate Division, a mid-level state appeals court, represented a last-ditch effort by Trump to block the trial judge’s ruling on Monday to proceed with the sentencing, scheduled for 10 days before his inauguration.
In his Monday ruling, Justice Juan Merchan rejected a request from Trump’s lawyers to delay the sentencing while they appealed two of the judge’s previous rulings upholding the Manhattan jury’s May guilty verdict on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The judge called Trump’s delay request mostly “a repetition of the arguments he has raised numerous times in the past.”
In scheduling Trump’s sentencing for Friday, Merchan said he was not inclined to send Trump to prison. The judge said a sentence of unconditional discharge, effectively putting a judgment of guilt on his record without a fine or probation, would be the most practical approach given Trump’s looming return to the presidency.
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