Appeals court rejects Trump bid to delay hush money sentencing

NEW YORK: A New York appellate court on Tuesday denied President-elect Donald Trump’s bid to halt sentencing set for Friday for his conviction on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star.

Associate Justice Ellen Gesmer of the Appellate Division, a mid-level state appeals court, made the decision after holding a hearing on Trump’s last-ditch effort 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.

In the half-hour hearing over Trump’s request for a delay on Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, Gesmer pressed Trump lawyer Todd Blanche on his argument that a sitting president’s immunity from prosecution extends to the transition period between winning the election and inauguration.