Judge delays sentencing of Trump in hush-money case until after November election

National news

Judge Juan M. Merchan’s decision Friday grants Trump a hard-earned reprieve as he navigates the aftermath of his criminal conviction and the final stretch of his presidential campaign.

By Associated Press

Updated September 6, 2024 | 1:51 p.m.

NEW YORK (AP) — A judge on Friday agreed to delay sentencing in Donald Trump’s bribery case until after the November election, giving him a hard-won reprieve as he navigates the aftermath of his criminal conviction and the final stretch of his presidential campaign.

Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is also considering a defense request to overturn the verdict on immunity grounds, delayed Trump’s sentencing until Nov. 26, several weeks after the final votes in the presidential election are cast.

The vote was scheduled for September 18, about seven weeks before Election Day.

Merchan wrote that he was postponing sentencing “to avoid any appearance – however unwarranted – that the proceedings have been affected by or seek to affect the upcoming presidential election in which the defendant is a candidate.”

“The Court is a just, impartial and apolitical institution,” he added.

Trump’s lawyers have pushed for the delay on multiple fronts, filing a petition with the judge and asking a federal court to intervene. They have argued that punishing the former president and current Republican nominee in the midst of a campaign to retake the White House would amount to election interference.

Trump’s lawyers have argued that delaying his sentencing until after the election would also give him time to assess next steps after Merchan rules on the defense’s request to vacate his conviction and dismiss the case because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity in July.

In his order Friday, Merchan delayed his decision on the matter until Nov. 12.

A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Trump’s request to move the case to Manhattan U.S. District Court. If successful, Trump’s lawyers said they would have sought to overturn the verdict and dismiss the case on immunity grounds.

Trump has appealed the federal court’s decision.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Trump’s case, deferred to Merchan and took no position on the defense’s request for a delay.

Messages seeking comment were left with Trump’s lawyers and the district attorney’s office.

Election Day is November 5, but many states are allowing voters to cast early ballots, with some set to begin the process just days before or after the September 18 date.

Trump was convicted in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels claims she and Trump had a sexual relationship a decade earlier after meeting at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.

Prosecutors have portrayed the settlement as a move by Trump to prevent 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 firm recorded the reimbursements as legal fees.

Trump maintains that the stories were false, that the reimbursements were for legal work and were properly recorded, and that the case — brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat — was part of a politically motivated “witch hunt” aimed at harming his current campaign.

Democrats who support their party’s nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, have made her condemnation central to their message.

In speeches at the party’s sentencing ceremony in Chicago last month, President Joe Biden called Trump a “convicted felon” and ran against a former prosecutor. Texas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett called Trump “a career criminal, with 34 felonies, two impeachments and a porn star to prove it.”

Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, drew cries of “lock him up” from the convention crowd when she quipped that Trump “fell asleep during 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 carries a possible sentence of up to four years in prison. Other possible penalties include probation, a fine or parole, which would require Trump to stay out of trouble to avoid further punishment. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime.

Trump has pledged to appeal, but that can only happen after his conviction is handed down.

In requesting the delay, Trump’s lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued that the short time between the scheduled September 16 immunity decision and the sentencing, which was scheduled to take place two days later, was unfair to Trump.

In preparation for the Sept. 18 sentencing, prosecutors will submit their sentencing recommendation while Merchan continues to consider whether to dismiss the case. If Merchan rules against Trump, he will need “sufficient time to evaluate and pursue appeal options at the state and federal levels,” they said.

The Supreme Court’s immunity ruling limits prosecutions of former presidents for official acts and prevents prosecutors from 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 testimony such as that from former White House staffers describing how the then-president responded to media coverage of the Daniels case.