Society

On Tuesday, the Manhattan prosecutor's office, which had convicted the businessman and now President-elect of the US in a criminal case, made known its position on the request for a mistrial.

The Manhattan prosecutor's office suggested freezing the proceedings until the end of Donald Trump's second term. As France Info points out, the newly elected president had been found criminally guilty of concealed payments of $130,000, or nearly €123,000, before the 2016 election to an adult film actress, Stormy Daniels. The latter had received these payments in exchange for her silence for an infidelity committed 10 years earlier.

The pronouncement of his sentence remains pending today. While last week the businessman's lawyers demanded a presidential pardon for their client, referring to the one granted by Joe Biden to his son Hunter, Alvin Bragg, the New York State Attorney in charge of the case, responded to them through an argument addressed to the judge of the Manhattan court.

"This court should reject the defense's request to cancel 'immediately' the indictment and the guilty verdict that the jury decided, on the sole basis of the result of the last presidential election," said Alvin Bragg. "There is currently no basis for such a cancellation before the inauguration of the defendant [on January 20], because the immunity of a president-elect does not exist," he added.

He emphasized: "And even after the investiture, his temporary immunity as president in office would not justify radically rejecting a guilty verdict voted unanimously by the jurors and erasing with a stroke of the pen all the completed stages of this criminal procedure."

(MH with Manon Pierre - Source: France info - Picture: Picture by Michel Vadon via WikiCommons licensed under cc by 2.0)