On January 10, a decision will be made on the sentence of Donald Trump, the president-elect of the USA, said judge Juan Merchan, adding that he is not ready to impose a prison sentence. The president-elect was previously found guilty by a jury of concealing payments to silence pornographic actress Stormy Daniels. This means that the verdict will be announced 10 days before he is sworn in.
In May, a jury in New York’s Manhattan state court found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with concealing payments to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet during the 2016 election campaign about their sexual relationship.
Trump’s attorneys claim the case should be dismissed because of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity. However, in mid-December, Judge Juan Mercant, who presided over Trump’s bribery trial, denied the US president-elect’s request to dismiss the case.
Court decision 10 days before the swearing in of the president
On Friday, Juan Mercan decided that the president-elect will hear the verdict on January 10. He said, citing Reuters, that he was not ready to issue a prison sentence and that the politician could appear in person or virtually at the trial.
The meeting is expected 10 days before Trump’s inauguration in Washington on January 20. Reuters explains that this is an “unprecedented scenario in US history”.
Donald Trump LILSON ROBBERT / PAP / EPA
The story of the relationship between Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump
The case of Trump’s relationship with pornographic actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was publicized in 2018. Then, in March, Daniels confirmed in an interview with CBS that just days before the presidential election, Michael Cohen, a Trump attorney, had paid her $130,000 in exchange for keeping quiet about their sexual relationship.
In an interview with CBS in 2018, Stormy Daniels revealed that she met Trump at a charity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nevada in July 2006. She claimed that Trump, then 60, invited her to dinner and then they went to his hotel room where they had sex. Trump’s wife Melania was not supposed to be there because she recently gave birth to the couple’s son. Trump later allegedly invited Daniels, then 27, to an event in California and to his office in Trump Tower in New York. In 2007, Trump allegedly met with Daniels at her Beverly Hills home to discuss her participation in the reality show The Celebrity Apprentice, which she was hosting at the time. The woman ultimately did not appear on the program.
In 2011, Daniels gave an interview to In Touch magazine in which he described his meetings with Trump. However, the conversation did not see the light of day because – as employees of the newspaper told CBS News – after Trump was asked to comment on the case, his lawyer threatened to sue the magazine. Daniels claims that a few weeks after her interview with In Touch, she was intimidated — a stranger approached her and her daughter and told her to “leave Trump alone” and “forget about this story.”
READ MORE: What happened between Donald Trump and porn star Stormy Daniels
Main photo: LLISON ROBBERT/PAP/EPA
