Bombshell hits Trump before inauguration

Republicans have reacted with fury after Donald Trump was hit with a major bombshell just days before his inauguration.

Republicans have reacted with fury after it was revealed that Donald Trump must be sentenced on January 10 — just 10 days before his inauguration.

Judge Juan Merchan made the ruling in the criminal case in which Mr Trump was convicted on charges involving hush money paid to a porn star — but he is not inclined to impose a jail sentence.

He said he denied Mr Trump’s motion to dismiss the case due to his presidential election victory. The judge said the Republican president-elect may appear for the sentencing either in-person or virtually.

US President-elect Donald Trump.

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In an 18-page decision, Mr Merchan rejected various motions from MrTrump’s lawyers seeking to have his conviction thrown out.

The judge said that instead of incarceration he was leaning towards an unconditional discharge — a far more lenient sentence that would nevertheless have Mr Trump entering the White House as a convicted felon.

“It seems proper at this juncture to make known the Court’s inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration,” the judge said, noting that prosecutors also did not believe a jail term was a “practicable recommendation.”

Mr Trump was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to stop her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.

Mr Trump’s attorneys had sought to have the case dismissed on various grounds, including the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling last year that former US presidents have sweeping immunity from prosecution for a range of official acts committed while in office.

Mr Merchan rejected that argument but he noted that Mr Trump will be immune from prosecution once he is sworn in as president.

Stormy Daniels, the porn star who claims to have slept with Donald Trump over a decade ago. Picture: Tobias Schwarz / AFP

“Finding no legal impediment to sentencing and recognising that Presidential immunity will likely attach once Defendant takes his Oath of Office, it is incumbent upon this Court to set this matter down for imposition of sentence prior to January 20, 2025,” Mr Merchan said.

Mr Trump also faced two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith but both were dropped under a long-standing Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.

Mr Trump was accused of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden and removing large quantities of top secret documents after leaving the White House, but the cases never came to trial.

Mr Trump also faces racketeering charges in Georgia over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election results in the southern state, but that case will likely be frozen while he is in the White House.

Republicans are furious

The decision to sentence Mr Trump on January 10 has been blasted as a “violation” of presidential immunity, by a Republican’s spokesman.

“Today’s order by the deeply conflicted, Acting Justice Merchan in the Manhattan DA Witch Hunt is a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s Immunity decision and other longstanding jurisprudence,” Steven Cheung, Mr Trump’s incoming communications director, said in a statement to AFP.

Mr Cheung — whose legal opinion is disputed by experts — called the case “lawless” and said the constitution demands that it be dismissed.

“President Trump must be allowed to continue the Presidential Transition process and to execute the vital duties of the presidency, unobstructed by the remains of this or any remnants of the Witch Hunts,” he added.

“There should be no sentencing, and President Trump will continue fighting against these hoaxes until they are all dead.”

Some good news for Trump

The news comes as Mr Trump narrowly avoided a political nightmare after the Republican speaker of the country’s House of Representatives just squeaked back into the role.

Republican Mike Johnson was returned as speaker of the house on Friday with the crucial backing of Mr Trump, ending a bitter standoff that threatened to see the 2025 session opening in chaos.

Johnson had angered backbenchers by working with Democrats to pass legislation, and his victory was secured only after tense backroom negotiations that saw more than a dozen rank-and-file Republicans voice doubts over his leadership.

A chaotic 2023-25 session was marked by conservative anger in particular over the Louisiana lawmaker’s handling of spending negotiations, as fiscal hawks lined up to accuse him of being soft on the deficit.

In the end there were only three Republican holdouts as voting began — with all 215 Democrats backing their leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Congressional media outlet Punchbowl News reported that Johnson was able to keep his speakership ambitions alive after Trump intervened personally to speak to two of the rebels by phone — just before they changed their votes.

“After four years of high inflation, we have a big agenda. We have a lot to do, and we can do it in a bipartisan fashion,” Johnson said as he pledged to help Trump transform the economy.

“We can fight high inflation, and we must. We’ll give relief to Americans, and we’ll extend the Trump tax cuts... We’re going to drastically cut back the size and scope of government, we’re going to return the power back to the people.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

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With the exception of Kentucky conservative hardliner Thomas Massie, the opposition to Johnson always looked soft, and he had spent much of the week working the phones and holding meetings with the conservatives who had opposed his candidacy.

‘Greater than ever’

“Mike will be a Great Speaker, and our Country will be the beneficiary. The People of America have waited four years for Common Sense, Strength, and Leadership,” the president-elect posted on social media.

“America will be greater than ever before!” Defeat for Johnson would have marked another embarrassment for Trump, who was shown the limits of his sway over House Republicans after they rebuffed his demands for a suspension of the country’s borrowing limit in December.

Trump’s looming presidential inauguration had also raised the stakes of the speakership fight, since the House would not have been able to certify the 78-year-old Republican’s victory, set for Monday, without electing a leader.

The speaker wields key influence in Washington by presiding over House business and is second in line to the presidency, after the vice president.

But Johnson has been weakened by the standoff with his party’s hard-liners, who demonstrated the leverage they hold given the Republicans’ wafer-thin majority in the lower house of Congress.

With the vote looking set to go down to the wire, former Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is 84 and recently suffered a fractured hip, turned up to cast her ballot, wearing flat heels for possibly the first time in her career.

House Republicans are scheduled to gather for a retreat in Washington on Saturday to talk about their plans for 2025, and the leadership meets again on Sunday in Baltimore.

But the first order of business will be to consider a controversial change to its rules package — which governs daily operations — that would allow only Republicans to force a vote on removing the speaker.

Democrats argue that the reform would leave Johnson answerable only to his own side rather than the whole chamber. In the last Congress, any single House member could introduce a “motion to vacate” the speaker’s chair.

The 36-page rules package for the 119th Congress raises the threshold to nine co-sponsors from the majority party.

— more to come