Trump Threatens Judge Merchan With Legal Action in Last-Ditch Effort to Postpone Criminal Sentencing

AP Photo/Seth Wenig; AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura

President-elect Donald Trump’s legal team is mounting a full-court press to prevent him from being sentenced later this week.

Last year, Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsification of business records in a criminal case brought against him by Manhattan County District Attorney Alvin Bragg. After several delays, Judge Juan Merchan landed on January 10 as his sentencing date.

But according to The New York Times, Trump is making one last ditch effort to stop the proceeding:

With the sentencing scheduled for Friday, just 10 days before the presidential inauguration, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have implored the judge overseeing his case to postpone the proceeding, according to a court filing unsealed on Monday.

Although that request is most likely doomed — the judge, Juan M. Merchan, was the one who scheduled the sentencing — Mr. Trump’s lawyers disclosed in the filing that they planned to escalate their effort. If the judge does not pause the sentencing by 2 p.m. on Monday, the filing said, Mr. Trump will “seek an emergency appellate review.”

Hoping to persuade a New York appeals court to intervene, Mr. Trump’s lawyers plan to file a civil action against Justice Merchan and seek to freeze the sentencing, according to the filing. It is unclear when they will file that action with the appellate court, but it could come as soon as Monday.

Even though Justice Merchan has signaled that he will spare the former and future president any substantive punishment, Mr. Trump is scrambling to avoid the symbolic blow of sentencing. Once Mr. Trump is sentenced for the 34-count conviction, he will formally become a felon.

In the court filing unsealed on Monday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers also indicated that they planned to challenge Justice Merchan’s decision last month to uphold the conviction. In preserving a jury’s verdict from May, the judge rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that a recent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity had nullified his conviction for falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal.

On Saturday, Trump raged against Merchan’s decision to move forward with his sentencing, writing on Truth Social that “I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made up charge by a corrupt judge who is just doing the work of the Biden/Harris Injustice Department, an attack on their political opponent, ME! He created a case where there was none. Keeps a ‘gag order’ on me so that I can’t talk about how crooked he is.”

“The Fake News knows all about it, but they refuse to talk. He may be the most conflicted judge in New York State history,” he added.

In a statement released on Monday, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung announced that “Today, President Trump’s legal team moved to stop the unlawful sentencing in the Manhattan D.A.’s Witch Hunt.”

“The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the state constitution of New York, and other established legal precedent mandate that this meritless hoax be immediately dismissed. The American People elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate that demands an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and all of the remaining Witch Hunts,” he continued. “We look forward to uniting our country in the new administration as President Trump makes America great again.”