Photographer: Victor J. Blue for The Washington Post/ Pool
The sentencing in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial will be delayed until after the November election.
Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in late May for falsifying business records regarding money payments to cover up extramarital affairs from being revealed during the 2016 campaign. He was originally scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, which was then delayed until September 18. The ex-president is facing up to four years behind bars, although many legal observers expect his sentence as a first-time offender would be far shorter, or even only probation with no jail time.
In the wake of a Supreme Court opinion finding that presidents did have immunity for “official acts” conducted while in office, Trump has argued that his conviction in this case — as well as his other pending criminal cases — should be tossed out. This argument has met with skepticism from legal experts who have pointed out that the New York case centered around his conduct before he was elected. However, as The New York Times noted, Trump’s lawyers have argued that prosecutors “built their case partly on evidence from his time in the White House.”
Trump’s attorneys had requested that Judge Juan Merchan delay the July 11 sentencing date to allow time to address the legal issues stemming from the Supreme Court ruling. On Tuesday, prosecutors responded with their own letter stating that while they believed Trump’s arguments were “without merit,” they did not object to a delay and were “respectfully request[ing] a deadline of July 24, 2024.”
Merchan had agreed to that original delay request and said at the time he would issue his ruling on Friday, September 6, and he did in fact issue a four-page ruling Friday afternoon delaying the sentencing until November 26.
In his ruling, Merchan dismissed the “litany of perceived and unsubstantiated grievances from previous filings [by Trump] that do not merit this Court’s attention” but still agreed to the delay requested by Trump’s defense team, noting that the prosecutors had also agreed a delay might be “appropriate” and were not opposed to it.
The “historic and intervening decision” from the Supreme Court on presidential immunity required time to allow the parties to submit briefs and argue those issues, Merchan noted, and any further adjournment past the September 18 date “will bring us within 41 days of the 2024 presidential election.”
“This is not a decision this Court makes lightly but it is the decision which in this Court’s view, best advances the interests of justice,” he wrote.
“The Court is a fair, impartial, and apolitical institution,” Merchan continued, and postponing Trump’s sentencing should “dispel any suggestion that the Court will have issued any decision or imposed sentence either to give an advantage to, or to create a disadvantage for, any political party and for any candidate for any office.”
CNN’s chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid reported on the ruling, calling it “a big win for the Trump legal team,” as they had “been really focused on this for the past few months, trying pretty much every legal avenue to try to get this delayed.”
This is a breaking news story and has been updated.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
