By Armando Hernandez
Dec 16, 2024, 7:51 PM EST
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan on Monday rejected Donald J. Trump’s argument that a recent Supreme Court ruling had voided his criminal case in New York, confirming the former president and future president’s felony conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.
Just last week, President-elect Donald Trump’s lawyers urged the judge to throw out his bribery conviction, rejecting prosecutors’ suggestion to preserve the verdict by treating the case as some courts do when a defendant dies.
However, Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan’s decision eliminates a possible exit from the case before Trump’s return to office next month.
In May, a jury convicted Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels. in 2016 to keep silent.
The allegations involved a scheme to conceal a hush payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the final days of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to silence her claims that they had sex years earlier, which he denies.
One month after the verdict, The Supreme Court ruled that former presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts, things they did in the course of running the country.
With Monday’s ruling, however, Merchan denied most of Trump’s claims that some of prosecutors’ evidence was related to official acts and therefore implicated immunity protections.
The judge said that even if he found some evidence related to official conduct, he would still find that prosecutors’ decision to use “these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records does not pose any danger of intrusion into authority.” and function of the Executive Branch.”
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