Donald Trump will be sentenced in the hush money case just days before he is set to be inaugurated as US president, a judge ruled on today (January 3).
The sentencing will take place on January 10 after Justice Juan Merchan denied Trump's motion to dismiss the case. However the judge is understood to not be inclined to give him a jail sentence, reports have claimed.
He was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels in May of this year. It has been argued by lawyers that the case needs to be put to bed before Trump is recquired to govern after he takes his oath on January 20.
They also argued that, due to a Supreme Court ruling in July that said a President has immunity while carrying out an official order while in office, the case should be thrown out.
This motion from Trump's team was dismissed. Judge Merchan said the evidence supplied was related "entirely to unofficial conduct" and thereforwas not an official act as president.
Merchan wrote: "This Court concludes that if error occurred regarding the introduction of the challenged evidence, such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt.
"Even if this Court did find that the disputed evidence constitutes official acts under the auspices of the Trump decision, which it does not, Defendant's motion is still denied as introduction of the disputed evidence constitutes harmless error and no mode of proceedings error has taken place."
The words did not go down well with Trump, who called it a "completely illegal, psychotic order" by a "corrupt and biased" judge on his social media platform Truth Social.
In a bid to prevent the case from being thrown out altogether, prosecutors asked the judge to remove the threat of prison time for the hush money conviction.
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