Trump’s hush-money sentencing delayed until after election

Sentencing on 34 counts of doctoring business records has been delayed to ‘avoid any appearance’ of affecting November’s presidential election.

Donald Trump is due to be sentenced for falsifying business records as part of a scheme to silence a porn star who alleged they had a sexual encounter.

A New York judge on Friday postponed Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush-money case until after the November election, giving the former president a victory as he heads into the final leg of the race for the White House.

Justice Juan Merchan moved the sentencing date, previously scheduled for Sept. 18, to Nov. 26, saying in a ruling that the case held “a unique place in this nation’s history” and that the delay was necessary to ensure its integrity.

“The imposition of sentence will be adjourned to avoid any appearance — however unwarranted — that the proceeding has been affected by or seeks to affect the approaching Presidential election in which the Defendant is a candidate,” Merchan said in the decision.

Lawyers for Trump had requested the judge delay the sentencing, arguing that a postponement would reduce accusations of election interference.

The delay means Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has staved off a public hearing that would have put his felony conviction back in the spotlight less than two months before voters head to the polls.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which brought the hush-money case against Trump, had previously said it would defer to the judge on whether to postpone sentencing.

A spokeswoman for the office didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.

In May a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony charges of falsifying business records, making him the first former president in U.S. history to be convicted of a crime.

Over the weekslong trial, prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office argued Trump conspired with a tabloid publisher and his former personal lawyer to influence the 2016 election by buying the silence of two women who alleged affairs with the then-candidate. After winning the election, Trump orchestrated a cover-up of a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels with false invoices, ledgers and checks, prosecutors said.

Trump has denied the affairs and said that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, had charged him out of political spite.

The former president has also repeatedly called for Merchan’s recusal in the case, alleging that the judge couldn’t fairly oversee the trial because of his daughter’s work for a digital agency whose clients included Democratic campaigns. Trump has also cited three small political contributions the judge made in 2020 to progressive causes and President Biden’s campaign. The judge had denied the recusal requests.

Trump was initially scheduled to be sentenced on July 11. Merchan pushed the date to Sept. 18 after Trump argued that his conviction should be reversed based on the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision. The high court found in July that a president can’t be charged for doing the job as outlined in the Constitution and has the presumption of immunity for other actions he takes while in office. The decision was in regard to federal charges that Trump sought to subvert the 2020 election.

In the hush-money case, Trump’s lawyers seized the Supreme Court ruling to argue that the district attorney’s office wrongfully relied on evidence relating to official acts he took while president in 2017 and 2018. Manhattan prosecutors have argued that the evidence involved unofficial acts by Trump.

Merchan had said he would decide the immunity issue on Sept. 16. However, lawyers for Trump said in a court filing in August that the timing of the decision and the sentencing were too close, leaving them only two days to craft an appeal if Merchan ruled against Trump. In Friday’s ruling, Merchan said he would now decide the issue on Nov. 12.

“Setting aside naked election-interference objectives, there is no valid countervailing reason for the Court to keep the current sentencing date on the calendar,” Trump’s lawyers said in their filing. “There is no basis for continuing to rush.”

The Wall Street Journal