A New York court on Friday postponed former President Trump's sentencing until Nov. 26. The ruling ensures that Trump will not face any criminal punishment until after the election.
Trump has used delay as a routine legal tactic in hopes of retaking the White House and halting prosecutions.
Trump has already successfully dismissed three of the four pretrial criminal cases or resolved them with the cases pending until after the election. Friday's ruling marks a similar victory for Trump in the hush money case, the only one so far to have resulted in a conviction.
Judge Juan Marchan, who oversaw the seven-week trial, was scheduled to sentence Trump on September 18. But he granted a delay after Trump argued that a delay was necessary for several reasons, including that he would first appeal if Marchan did not vacate the 34 convictions on the grounds of presidential immunity.
In his ruling, Judge Marchan stressed that postponing sentencing would ensure that the November presidential election would not be affected by the ruling, and vice versa.
“This is an isolated issue that occupies a unique place in the history of this nation, and this court has heard it since its inception, from indictment to jury verdict to numerous motions and other issues in between.” Marchan wrote:“If this Court, after carefully considering the Supreme Court's decision in Trump, decides to move forward with this case, it will be faced with one of the most significant and difficult decisions a Justice on this Court faces: the sentencing of a defendant who has been found guilty of a crime by a unanimous jury.”
“The request for postponement will be decided in the same manner as this court has decided all other matters that have arisen since the origin of this case, that is, by applying the facts and law after careful consideration of the issues and the parties' respective arguments so as to protect the integrity of the proceedings, ensure justice is served and judicial independence is firmly upheld,” he wrote.
Trump has tried relentlessly to delay the hush money trial but has failed. Last month, he tried a second time to move the case to federal court, a last-minute move that was summarily rejected by a federal judge, who said the former president had failed to show “good cause.”
But since the Supreme Court upheld presidential immunity, President Trump has enjoyed new successes.
Judge Marchan initially scheduled Trump's sentencing for July after a jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records stemming from hush money deals during Trump's 2016 campaign. Trump's lawyers did not object to the date at the time.
But Trump again sought a delay after the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents have at least a presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for their official conduct and that protected conduct cannot be introduced into evidence. The justices abruptly postponed the ruling to September so that the former president could first begin efforts to overturn his conviction.
While the hush money payments and much of the trial at issue concern conduct before Trump was president, Trump's lawyers argue that jurors improperly saw some of his tweets from his White House days, government ethics documents, testimony from two White House aides and other protected conduct.
Judge Marchan was scheduled to rule on Trump's immunity claim by September 16, but the possibility of last-minute confusion has increased ahead of Trump's sentencing, scheduled for that week.
“One business day is an unreasonably short period of time if President Trump must assert these rights in order to avoid 'potential self-cannibalism of the Executive Branch' for future generations,” Trump's lawyers wrote in their request for an extension.
Marchan's ruling postpones a decision on his immunity until after the election on Nov. 12. If the ruling is upheld, sentencing will be brought forward to Nov. 26, the judge said.
“The Court is a fair, impartial and apolitical institution,” Marchan wrote. “The deferred decision on the motion and, if necessary, sentencing should dispel any suggestion that the Court will issue decisions or sentences that favor or disadvantage any political party or candidate for public office.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chang said in a statement that no sentencing should be imposed in the case and that Trump's hush money lawsuit and other legal issues should be dismissed “by order of the United States Supreme Court.”
A spokesman for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office stressed that a 12-juror New York jury had “swiftly and unanimously” convicted Trump in the case.
“The Manhattan District Attorney's Office stands ready to serve a sentence on the new date set by the Court,” the spokesperson said.
Prosecutors did not oppose the delay, leaving it to the judge to decide, citing safety concerns over the last-minute cancellation of preparations for Trump's sentencing.But they criticized other of Trump's arguments for a delay, including his previously dismissed complaint about the judge's daughter working for a progressive digital agency.
“The public will respect the court's decision regarding an appropriate post-trial schedule,” prosecutors wrote.
Updated 1:49 p.m.
