Judge delays Trump sentencing in hush money case until November

NBC NEWS

A New York judge has delayed former President Donald Trump’s sentencing on felony criminal charges until Nov. 26.

“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,” Judge Juan Merchan wrote in the decision handed down Friday.

Merchan issued the ruling Friday after Trump’s attorneys had asked him to postpone the Sept. 18 sentencing until after the election in order to allow them to be in position to appeal a pending ruling involving presidential immunity.

That ruling was expected by Sept. 16 – just two days before what would have been the first ever sentencing of a former president on criminal charges. Trump was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels near the end of the 2016 presidential campaign.

“A single business day is an unreasonably short period of time” for such an appeal, Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued in an Aug. 14 filing. “There is no basis for continuing to rush,” they contended.

Prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said they would “defer to the Court on whether an adjournment is warranted to allow for orderly appellate litigation” of any Trump appeal, but “would be prepared to appear for sentencing on any future date the Court sets.”

Merchan’s order Friday also pushed back the date for his ruling on the immunity issue until Nov. 12 —a full two weeks before the possible sentencing date and after the election.

The delay is the second time Trump’s sentencing has been postponed in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling expanding presidential immunity in an unrelated federal criminal case against Trump in Washington, D.C.. The sentencing was originally scheduled for July 11, but Merchan granted a request by Trump’s lawyers for extra time to try to convince the judge that high court’s July 1 decision should result in the verdict being overturned and the indictment being dismissed.

The drastic moves are necessary, they argue, because the Supreme Court’s ruling shows that Manhattan prosecutors should not have been allowed to present evidence of his “official acts” at trial, including former White House aide Hope Hicks’ testimony describing a conversation she had with Trump while he was president, and the use of various public statements he made as a president as exhibits. Prosecutors maintain the Supreme Court ruling had no impact on the evidence they introduced at trial, which centered on Trump’s personal conduct, and that the judge should leave the historic jury verdict in place.

Trump’s attorneys also launched a second effort last month to move the state case into federal court, citing the Supreme Court ruling, another move that could delay the sentencing. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected that request earlier this week.

Hellerstein rebuffed Trump’s earlier attempt to move the case to federal court last year, finding the evidence in the case “overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal” one for Trump — “a cover-up of an embarrassing event. Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a President’s official acts.”