Associated Press
A Judge agreed Friday to postpone Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case until after the November election, granting him a hard-won reprieve as he navigates the aftermath of his criminal conviction and the homestretch of his presidential campaign.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is also weighing a defense request to overturn the verdict on immunity grounds, delayed Trump’s sentencing until Nov. 26, several weeks after the final votes are cast in the presidential election.
It had been scheduled for Sept. 18, about seven weeks before Election Day.
Merchan wrote that he was postponing the sentencing “to avoid any appearance — however unwarranted — that the proceeding has been affected by or seeks to affect the approaching presidential election in which the Defendant is a candidate.”
“The Court is a fair, impartial, and apolitical institution,” he added.
Trump’s lawyers pushed for the delay on multiple fronts, petitioning the Judge and asking a federal court to intervene. They argued that punishing the former President and current Republican nominee in the thick of his campaign to retake the White House would amount to election interference.
Trump’s lawyers argued that delaying his sentencing until after the election would also allow him time to weigh next steps after Merchan rules on the defense’s request to reverse his conviction and dismiss the case because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s July presidential immunity ruling.
In his order Friday, Merchan delayed a decision on that until Nov. 12.
A federal Judge on Tuesday rejected Trump’s request to have the U.S. District Court in Manhattan seize the case from Merchan’s state court. Had they been successful, Trump’s lawyers said they would have then sought to have the verdict overturned and the case dismissed on immunity grounds.
Trump is appealing the federal court ruling.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Trump’s case, deferred to Merchan and did not take a position on the defense’s delay request.
Messages seeking comment were left for Trump’s lawyers and the District Attorney’s Office.
Election Day is Nov. 5, but many states allow voters to cast ballots early, with some set to start the process just a few days before or after the date Sept. 18.
Trump was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels claims she and Trump had a sexual encounter a decade earlier after they met at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.
Prosecutors cast the payout as part of a Trump-driven effort to keep voters from hearing salacious stories about him during his first presidential campaign. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels and was later reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses.
Trump maintains that the stories were false, that reimbursements were for legal work and logged correctly, and that the case — brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat — was part of a politically motivated “witch hunt” aimed at damaging his current campaign.
Democrats backing their party’s nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, have made his conviction a focus of their messaging.
In speeches at the party’s conviction in Chicago last month, President Joe Biden called Trump a “convicted felon” running against a former prosecutor. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, labeled Trump a “career criminal, with 34 felonies, two impeachments and one porn star to prove it.”
Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, inspired chants of “lock him up” from the convention crowd when she quipped that Trump “fell asleep at his own trial, and when he woke up, he made his own kind of history: the first person to run for President with 34 felony convictions.”
Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years behind bars. Other potential sentences include probation, a fine or a conditional discharge, which would require Trump to stay out of trouble to avoid additional punishment. Trump is the first ex-President convicted of a crime.
Trump has pledged to appeal, but that cannot happen until he is sentenced.
In seeking the delay, Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued that the short time between the scheduled immunity ruling on Sept. 16 and sentencing, which was to have taken place two days later, was unfair to Trump.
To prepare for a Sept. 18 sentencing, the lawyers said, prosecutors would be submitting their punishment recommendation while Merchan is still weighing whether to dismiss the case. If Merchan rules against Trump, he would need “adequate time to assess and pursue state and federal appellate options,” they said.
The Supreme Court’s immunity decision reins in prosecutions of ex-Presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a President’s unofficial actions were illegal.
Trump’s lawyers argue that in light of the ruling, jurors in the hush money case should not have heard such evidence as former White House staffers describing how the then-President reacted to news coverage of the Daniels deal.
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
14 comments
Michael K
September 6, 2024 at 2:14 pm
Equal justice under the law?
Not if you inherited hundreds of millions of dollars and and lie and cheat and game the system.
Yrral
September 6, 2024 at 2:57 pm
A man that brag on barging on half dress teenagers , should be wall off to the public forever Google Trump Teenagers Pagents
My Take
September 6, 2024 at 4:34 pm
If Trump—elected or not–is not sentenced to some sort of confinement, then at very least anyone else imprisoned on such charges should be released.
tom palmer
September 6, 2024 at 5:03 pm
I understand not making the whiner in chief a martyr, but anyone else would have been sentenced by now.
Bill Pollard
September 6, 2024 at 5:42 pm
He should have been sentenced by now. If he ends up at Leavenworth before election day, that’s his own fault.
ELVIS PITTS AMERICAN
September 6, 2024 at 6:16 pm
Good evening Sage Patriots,
STAND BY FOR ELVIS [FKA EARL] TO INTERPERATE WHAT THE DELAY MEANS:
The DNC is greatfull for Judge Juan M. Merchan, making a “TOTAL DOOK 4 BRAINS LEFTIST CLOWN AND ASS OF HIMSELF” with his foolish rullings and generally being a Leftist Tool in this case.
SO:
The DNC told Judge Juan M. Merchan, that their polling shows Less Than Zero % chance of a Harris POTUS win and that Judge Juan M. Merchan, better stsrt Kissing Trump’s Ass if he wants to remain a Judge and continue being The DNC’s “DO BOY TOOL”.
IN CLOSING:
Myself, Don, and Don Junior are looking into setting up free counsuling after our POTUS inaguration to Dook 4 Brains Fools that vote HARRIS …. there will still be a few crazy enough to vote for her.
We are not going to punish the Judge as hes already ruined his carreer in Sage Jurisprudance and will likely be kicked to the curb by The DNC as he has used up all of his usefulness to the Left.
THIS IS GREAT NEWS FOR ALL SAGE PATRIOTS WHO ARE FREE AT LAST TO RELAX THEIR SPHINCTERS OVER THE WEEKEND. ELVIS
Sundance
September 6, 2024 at 9:37 pm
38 felony charges goes under the table after election day…. Totally immunized.
Biden might get a fine for tax invasions.
Sundance
September 6, 2024 at 11:24 pm
Immunity ….does that include decisions of elimination of people that are in your way. ,,And make the disserpear. and Clinton who lied under oath should he be immuned too.?
Homer J Simpson
September 7, 2024 at 2:46 am
Ok, first the “not-so-special prosecutor” that is bringing all these charges was never officially sanctioned by Congress. Do u know what that makes every single charge he has levied against President Trump? Null, void, poo-poo, because Mr. Smith has no power properly and lawfully given to him to be a special prosecutor. It’s the same as me or u, strolling into a court room and claiming “I’m special prosecutor in chief, Homer J Simpson. Judge, get the resident in chief and his kakleing vice doofus in here on the double! They guilty of some crimez….” For real, all of these charges should have been thrown out upon that revelation, but the non-partisan judicial system of NY with its elected members that campaigned on “getting Trump” are completely unbiased and fair…lolz!
—Homer
Marge
September 7, 2024 at 12:32 pm
Homer, you might want to wait for the appeal to be ruled on. D’oh!
Homer J Simpson
September 7, 2024 at 2:57 am
Biden “resident-in-chief”—bonefied treasonous criminal that will most likely skate Scott-free. Damn shame.
—Homer
ELVIS PITTS AMERICAN
September 7, 2024 at 6:39 pm
Thanks Homer and your increadably HOTTY HOT MlLF WIFEY MARGE for your second prediction of Trumps POTUS term.
Nobody believed your 2016 perdiction but you will both be correct again in 2024,
ELVIS PITTS AMERICAN
Ocean Joe
September 7, 2024 at 12:31 pm
Trump’s ladies are not cheap dates. E. Jean Carroll cost about $85 million to assault, Stormy cost $135k to keep quiet and then didn’t, who knows how much his first two wives got and we know Melanoma is probably set up to receive a fortune and deserves every penny of it.
ELVIS PITTS AMERICAN
September 7, 2024 at 6:43 pm
OJ, my besty lefty, now be honest, both you and me, ELVIS PITTS AMERICAN, got Wood many times just thinking about Marge Simpson and her Hotty Hot Blue Hair.
Yes it is even Blue “DOWN THERE”,
Just ask OJ & EARL [NOW KNOWN AS ELVIS),
ELVIS PITTS AMERICAN
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