President-elect Donald Trump's guilty verdict on 34 felony counts in New York won't be thrown out due to his presidential election, Judge Juan Merchan ruled Friday, keeping one of the only remaining criminal cases against Trump alive as the judge set Trump’s sentencing for Jan. 10, just 10 days before his inauguration.
Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom during the second day of his criminal trial at ... [+]
Merchan denied Trump’s request to have the verdict against him thrown out, scheduling the sentencing for Jan. 10 at 9:30 a.m. after previously postponing it following Trump’s election.
Trump asked for the verdict against him to be thrown out in light of his presidential election, arguing that continuing the legal proceedings would “threaten the functioning of the federal government” and violate the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution that prioritizes federal law over state law.
Prosecutors argued the case shouldn’t be thrown out, even as they acknowledged Trump’s presidency could require the court to make accommodations, suggesting Merchan should postpone Trump’s sentencing until after he leaves office, or simply end the case without throwing it out or sentencing Trump—as courts do when a defendant dies before they’re sentenced.
Merchan’s ruling came after he already rejected a separate request from Trump to throw out the verdict, which was based on the Supreme Court’s ruling giving Trump some immunity from criminal charges. The judge struck down Trump’s claims that some evidence used at the trial was covered under the immunity ruling—which bars Trump from being prosecuted based on his official acts in office—including testimony from Trump’s former aides and tweets he posted while in the White House. Even if those pieces of evidence were covered by the immunity ruling, the court would still still have ruled that using them at trial “as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch,” Merchan wrote in his December ruling.
In addition to his conviction in the Manhattan case, Trump still faces ongoing legal issues, though his other criminal cases have fallen apart in the wake of his presidential win. Both of the federal criminal cases against him were dropped after his victory, given the Justice Department’s policy not to prosecute sitting presidents. While the criminal charges against him in Georgia haven’t been thrown out yet, that case was thrown into disarray in December as an appeals court disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from leading the case against Trump and his allies. Willis is appealing that decision, and if she’s not reinstated, the case could still get transferred to a different Georgia prosecutor—but it could also get dropped entirely. Trump’s presidency does not affect the ongoing civil cases against him, however, and the civil fraud case against Trump and his business associates and writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against Trump are still pending in appeals courts. A federal appeal court upheld a separate case Carroll brought against Trump, which found him liable for defamation and sexual assault, in December, rejecting Trump’s request to have the jury verdict against him thrown out.
Trump will not be able to pardon himself once he takes office. The president’s pardon power applies only to federal charges, while this case against Trump was brought in New York state court. Trump will not have to pardon himself on any federal charges, since the two pending federal criminal cases against him were both dropped after his election—though it’s unclear if he would have been able to in the first place. The Justice Department issued guidance during the Watergate scandal in 1974 saying presidents can’t pardon themselves, though since President Richard Nixon resigned without trying to pardon himself, the issue has never been tested in practice.
Trump became the first former or sitting president to be found guilty on criminal charges in May, when a jury convicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsification of business records following a weeks-long trial. Trump was charged based on a hush money payment his ex-attorney Michael Cohen paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, which Trump then reimbursed Cohen for through payments made throughout 2017. Prosecutors successfully argued those payments were falsely labeled as being for legal services, though Trump pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing in the case. While Trump’s sentencing was initially supposed to take place in July, the ex-president successfully pushed it back after the Supreme Court’s ruling giving him some immunity, first until September and then until after the election, as Merchan ruled he wanted to avoid any appearance of political bias that could arise if he sentenced Trump right before Election Day. The sentencing was then postponed indefinitely following Trump’s presidential win, as the president-elect made a renewed push to have the verdict dropped.
This story is breaking and will be updated.