By Luc Cohen and Jack Queen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York appeals court on Tuesday rejected President-elect Donald Trump’s request to stay sentencing on Friday for his conviction on criminal charges stemming from money paid to a porn star .
Trump’s request to the Appellate Division, a mid-level appeals court in the state, represented a last-ditch effort by Trump to block the trial judge’s decision Monday to proceed with sentencing, scheduled 10 days before his inauguration.
In his ruling Monday, Judge Juan Merchan rejected a request from Trump’s lawyers to delay sentencing while they appealed two of the judge’s previous rulings upholding the Manhattan jury’s guilty verdict in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records. The judge called Trump’s delay request a “repetition of arguments he has made numerous times in the past.”
In setting Trump’s sentencing for Friday, Merchan said he was not inclined to send Trump to prison. The judge said a sentence of absolute discharge, effectively putting a judgment of guilt on his record without a fine or probation, would be the most practical approach given Trump’s imminent return to the presidency.
