Judge postpones Donald Trump’s sentencing in hush-money case until after November election

Donald Trump will not be sentenced in his Manhattan hush money case until after the November presidential election, a judge ruled on Friday.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said he would rule on Trump’s outstanding motion to toss his conviction on Nov. 12.

He said Trump would be sentenced on Nov. 26 “if necessary.”

“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,” Merchan wrote.

Trump’s defense team had asked the judge to delay the sentencing until after the election to give the Republican nominee time to appeal if Merchan rejects his request to overturn the verdict based on the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling on presidential immunity. They’d also argued that the proceeding going forward would constitute “naked election interference.”

The ex-president has lobbed a litany of legal arguments at multiple state and federal courts in recent weeks in an effort to stop the proceeding from going forward.

Manhattan Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein on Tuesday declined to intervene in the case at Trump’s behest for the second time — finding, as a federal judge, it wasn’t his place to weigh in on whether Trump got a fair trial in a state court, as he was asked to.

As to Trump’s arguments that the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity should have protected him from the Manhattan DA’s prosecution, Hellerstein said he felt no differently than when he first shot it down last year.

“Nothing in the Supreme Court’s opinion affects my previous conclusion that the hush money payments were private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority,” the judge wrote.

Trump has filed papers trying to get a federal appeals court to intervene and allow him to move the case and keep his appeal alive.

Getting the case moved to federal court would potentially allow Trump’s lawyers to more efficiently direct their claims of presidential immunity to the Supreme Court. The high court’s conservative majority on July 1 ruled that “official acts” by presidents are broadly immune from criminal prosecution.

Trump’s lawyers have argued the ruling, which also stopped prosecutors from showing evidence of official acts to prove unofficial ones were illegal, barred the Manhattan DA from presenting evidence relating to his time in office, like testimony from his staffers and tweets from his presidential account on Twitter, now known as X.

Trump, 78, was found guilty on May 30 of 34 counts of falsification of New York business records, which made him the first U.S. president ever to be convicted of a crime.

The case centered on his 2017 reimbursements to Michael Cohen for paying porn star Stormy Daniels less than two weeks out from the 2016 election to stay silent about an illicit sexual encounter with Trump at a Lake Tahoe golf course. Jurors heard the payoff was one of several arranged to hide potentially damaging information about Trump from voters.

The charges carry up to four years in prison, a term of probation, community service, or possibly fines.

It’s not yet known what punishment prosecutors plan to recommend.

Cohen, who was Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 after he was federally convicted of violating campaign finance laws by issuing the payoff as Trump’s underling and other crimes. He served half the sentence at his Trump Park Ave. apartment due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump is also facing charges in Georgia and Washington, D.C., for allegedly plotting to overturn President Biden’s win in 2020. On Thursday, he pleaded not guilty to charges included in a streamlined indictment in the D.C. case, which was altered after the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche and a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.

Originally Published: September 6, 2024 at 1:18 p.m.