Published: 11:10pm, 7 Jan 2025Updated: 2:16am, 8 Jan 2025
US president-elect Donald Trump asked a New York appellate court on Tuesday to throw out his conviction on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, and to dismiss the case before his scheduled Friday sentencing.
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The request to the Appellate Division, a mid-level state appeal 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 that 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 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.
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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.
