Judge Juan Merchan denied judicial immunity to the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, this Monday. for the New York case in which he was convicted of falsifying business records to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels.
Merchan denied in a writing that Trump could benefit from the judicial immunity that the Supreme Court granted to the country’s presidents and former presidents in a ruling last summer.
The judge explained that the Supreme Court ruling only grants immunity to former presidents for “official acts” carried out when they were in office, so it cannot be applied in the case for which he was tried in New York.
However, Merchan did not comment on another motion presented by Trump’s defense that asks to dismiss his conviction for the fact that he was elected president in the elections on November 5.
The judge rejects this possibility because Trump was not yet president when he falsified documents to hide that he had bribed actress Stormy Daniels not to reveal their sexual relations.
After the Republican’s electoral victory, Merchan indefinitely postponed the sentence, which has been pending since a jury convicted him in May of falsifying business records to silence, during the electoral campaign of 2016, an alleged past affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels.
By being elected president, Trump has escaped two causes
This is the only criminal case for which Trump has been convicted. Thanks to his electoral victory, The Republican has escaped two federal cases against him, that of the assault on the Capitol and that of the classified documents that were taken from the White House, since special prosecutor Jack Smith decided to close the accusations.
