Donald J. in Manhattan. The judge overseeing Trump’s criminal case postponed his sentencing until Election Day, a significant victory for the former president as he seeks to overturn his conviction and win back the White House.
In Friday’s ruling, the judge, Juan M. Merchan rescheduled sentencing for November 26. He had previously planned to sentence Mr. Trump on Sept. 18, just seven weeks before Election Day, when Mr. Trump will face Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency.
While the decision will avoid a courtroom spectacle in the final stages of the campaign, the delay itself could still affect the election, keeping voters in the dark about whether the Republican presidential nominee will ultimately spend time behind bars.
It is not clear whether sentencing Mr. Trump in September would have helped or hurt him politically; His conviction may serve as an embarrassing reminder of his criminal record, but also further his claims of political martyrdom.
Justice Merchan’s decision came at the request of Mr. Trump, who asked for the sentencing to be delayed until after the election, in part so he had more time to challenge his conviction. Prosecutors working for the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, who brought the case, Judge adjournedPaving the way for at least a brief adjournment.
The judge’s decision to proceed with the prosecution is likely to anger Mr. Bragg’s liberal supporters, arguing that Mr. Trump is above the law, protected from the consequences of a conviction like any other criminal. To avoid that impression, left-leaning legal scholars — and Trump critics looking for catharsis — wanted Justice Merchan to immediately hold the former president accountable. Convicted in May Falsified records to cover up sex scandal.
Mr Trump, the first former US president to be convicted, faces up to four years in prison. Justice Merchan, however, could impose a shorter sentence or just probation.
Mr. Trump’s request for an adjournment created an unprecedented predicament for the judge, whose decision came despite earlier efforts to treat Mr. Trump as any other defendant.
Mr. Trump, of course, was no ordinary defendant: He insulted the judge, tried to throw him out of the case and made personal attacks on Justice Murchan’s daughter, a Democratic political consultant. For Justice Merchan’s part, he pushed the case forward for more than a year — even as Mr. Trump tried to thwart it at every turn — and imposed a strict order on the former president that prevented him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and the judge himself. the family
Justice Merchan, a veteran judge who once vowed to apply the “rules of law equitably”, was an unlikely relief to the former president. Yet his ruling on Friday marked Mr. Trump’s latest success in fending off his various legal entanglements, a strategy that has paid off in all four criminal cases against the former president.
In the Manhattan case, the only charges that have reached trial, Mr. Trump’s lawyers spent months creating a web of legal challenges that influenced each other, and sometimes contradicted each other. There were applications for delay. Request to throw out the case. and long-shot maneuvers to move the case to federal court.
Justice Murchan once delayed the sentence at Mr Trump’s request early in the complex process. Mr. Trump’s lawyers wanted to push back the sentencing, which was originally scheduled for July 11, so that Justice Merchan could consider his request to overturn the conviction based on a recent US Supreme Court decision. Gives it broad immunity For official actions as president. Justice Merchan agreed to accept his request and move the sentencing to September 18.
But when Justice Murchan announced plans to rule on the immunity bid on September 16, two days before sentencing, Mr Trump’s lawyers sought a further delay. The attorneys, Todd Blanche and Emil Bowe, argued that the judge’s schedule was too tight.
A delay would save Mr. Trump distraction — and humiliation — at a crucial moment. Ms. Harris’s entry into the presidential race in July boosted the campaign and erased the former president’s lead in the polls.
In a letter filed with the court, Mr. Trump’s lawyers suggested that stopping his sentencing just weeks before Election Day on Nov. 5 could unduly influence voters.
“By postponing sentencing until after that election — which is of paramount importance to the nation as a whole,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers said, “the court will eliminate, if not eliminate, issues about the integrity of any future proceedings.”
Prosecutors, while not contesting the delay, said Mr. Trump’s own “strategic and explosive litigation tactics” caused the scheduling problems. And they challenged Mr. Trump’s efforts to seek a conviction based on the Supreme Court’s immunity decision, Arguing that the High Court judgment has “no effecton the Manhattan prosecution and noted that Mr. Trump’s sex scandal cover-up was unrelated to his presidency.
“The evidence he claims is influenced by the Supreme Court’s ruling is merely the mountains of testimony and documentary evidence that the jury considered in convicting him,” the lawyers wrote.
In May, a jury of 12 New Yorkers convicted Mr. Trump after a seven-week trial of all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened his 2016 presidential campaign.
The case arose out of hush-money payments to a porn star, Stormi Daniels, to Mr. Trump’s fixer, Michael D. Cohen did just before the election. Mr. Trump eventually paid Mr. Cohen, who became the star witness at trial. And the former president, the jury found, orchestrated a scheme to use falsified records to conceal the nature of the compensation.
In the immediate aftermath of his conviction, Mr. Trump intensified his strategy of delay, which is tantamount to legal power for the former president.
Mr Trump managed to delay his Manhattan trial for three weeks while managing to delay indefinitely trials in Washington and Georgia, where he is accused of conspiring to destroy democracy by refusing to concede his 2020 election defeat. (The Supreme Court’s immunity ruling stems from the Washington case.) Separately, a federal judge in Florida Case dismissed In which Mr. Trump was accused of mishandling classified documents.
Other strategies failed. Mr. Trump recently sought to move his Manhattan case to federal court, his second attempt to do so. This time he cited the Supreme Court’s immunity judgment. But like his first attempt, he failed, with the judge again rejecting Mr. Trump’s argument that the case involved his official functions as president.
“Nothing in the Supreme Court’s opinion affects my previous conclusion that hush money payments were private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority,” said a federal judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein wrote in his opinion, which Mr. Trump is appealing. .
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