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A New York judge will decide on whether to throw out President-elect Donald Trump's "hush money" case conviction based on the Supreme Court's prior decision to grant him presidential immunity on Tuesday (November 12), the New York Post reports.
Trump's defense team previously delayed sentencing prior to his 2024 election victory last week. CNN's Paula Reid reported that Trump's defense team would argue that "as president-elect Trump is entitled to the same protections as a sitting president and should be protected from any state prosecutors, any action in a state level proceeding."
"The judge, Judge Juan Merchan, has given himself a deadline of November 12 to weigh in on whether this entire conviction should be tossed after the Supreme Court's immunity ruling this summer. If he does that the sentencing will go away, but the Trump team, again, they're not even just trying to delay this, they are going to try to get this canceled."
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Trump, 78, would have absolute immunity from prosecution for "official acts" during his presidency in July and left it up to lower courts to decide what constitutes an "official act" by a sitting president. The former president faces up to four years in prison after being convicted of 34 counts of felony falsifying business records in an effort to hide hush-money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 presidential election, though former prosecutor Neama Rahmani predicts the president-elect won't be incarcerated.
“Merchan doesn’t have the stomach to imprison a former president or president-elect,” Rahmani said via the New York Post. “Now that Trump has won, his criminal problems go away.”