Trump, sentence in porn star case postponed until after vote

Only a few days after the first televised debate with Kamala Harris and only nine weeks before the election, Donald Trump cashes in on a major victory on the judicial front: the postponement of the penalty in the case of the under-the-table payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, scheduled for 18 September.

The good news for the tycoon came on the day he was back in court in New York for another of the many court cases he is involved in, the appeal against his sentence to pay $5 million to Jean Carroll. "I'm the one who should sue her," the former president of the writer and journalist who accused him of sexual assault and defamation began after the hearing. "She doesn't even remember when the incident took place. She made it all up after watching an episode of Law and Order," the former president attacked, speaking to reporters at Trump Tower in what was billed as a press conference and instead turned out to be a 45-minute monologue with no questions from reporters.

The Donald then attacked the 'corrupt' judicial system and the prosecutors who investigate it 'at the behest' of Harris, who has now replaced Joe Biden in his anti-judiciary invectives. He then moved on to target his rival directly, insinuating that the network on which their first debate will take place on 10 September is allied with the Democratic nominee. "He wanted to do it on Abc because they're his friends, he'll know all the questions in advance," the tycoon said. "I'm OK with it anyway, I let her choose, otherwise she wouldn't have done it," he added.

Meanwhile, Harris has garnered the support of some 90 top American executives, including James Murdoch, Rupert's son. Among the signatories of a letter in support of the Democrat are joined by Peter Chernin, co-founder and partner of the Chernin Group, Barry Diller chairman of Iac and former CEO of Paramount, the head of Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman, and Michael Lynton, former CEO of Sony Entertainment. But also the billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Mavericks, the Dallas basketball team, and former NBA champion Earvin 'Magic' Johnson, now president and CEO of Magic Johnson Enterprises.

He obviously signed Jeffrey Katzenberg, former CEO of DreamWorks and former chairman of Disney Studios, who was one of Biden's big fundraisers before he retired. The letter does not explicitly name Trump, but states that Harris 'represents the best path to sustaining the strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy'. Also in favour of the vice president is the verdict of America's voting prediction guru, historian Allan Lichtman, who has been guessing all the winners for over 40 years. The 77-year-old professor at the American University in Washington ruled that it will be Harris who will win the White House in November, thanks to a theory based on 13 'true or false' questions. Lichtmann was one of the few to predict Trump's victory in 2016 and since 1984 he has been wrong only once in 2000 with the challenge between George W. Bush and Al Gore.