MANHATTAN (CN) — The New York judge overseeing Donald Trump's hush-money proceedings pushed back the former president's sentencing to Sept. 18, according to a letter to counsel signed by the judge on Tuesday.
Following Trump's May conviction on charges of falsifying business records, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan had initially set a sentencing date of July 11. But after defense attorneys asked the court to toss Trump's guilty verdict on the heels of this week's Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, Merchan agreed to delay the proceedings to allow the parties to argue on the matter.
Merchan settled on mid-September for Trump's new sentencing, "if such is still necessary."
Earlier Tuesday, Manhattan prosecutors said they wouldn't oppose delaying Trump’s sentencing to allow him to make the argument that presidential immunity shields him from prosecution in the state criminal case. Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass wrote in a letter to the court that “although we believe the defendant’s arguments to be without merit,” the district attorney’s office won’t oppose Trump’s request to submit a memorandum of law in support of his motion to set aside the verdict, thus adjourning his sentencing “pending determination of his motion.”
Steinglass asked for a July 24 deadline to file and serve a response to said motion. Merchan approved that timeline in his Tuesday ruling.
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that former presidents have absolute immunity for official acts in Donald Trump’s challenge to his federal election subversion case. Shortly following the bombshell decision, Trump’s legal team penned a letter to Merchan asking him to toss the verdict based on the ruling.
In the letter, first reported on Monday but made publicly available Tuesday, Trump’s attorneys told Merchan that evidence of Trump’s official acts as president should have never been put before the Manhattan jury under the high court’s new ruling.
“The Trump decision confirmed the defense position that DANY should not have been permitted to offer evidence at trial of President Trump’s official acts,” Trump’s attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote in the letter referring to the district attorney of New York.
They didn’t explicitly ask for a delay to Trump’s July 11 sentencing, but requested until July 10 to submit relevant paperwork related to the motion. If granted, Trump’s sentencing will likely be pushed.
“Because of the complexity of the issues presented, President Trump does not object to an adjournment of the July 11, 2024 sentencing date in order to allow adequate time for full briefing, oral argument, and a decision,” Trump’s team wrote.
The Supreme Court’s decision was a lifeline for Trump in his ever-growing list of legal woes. But applying it to this state criminal case is a longshot, according to retired New York judge George Grasso.
Grasso told Courthouse News that it’s unlikely Trump’s guilty verdict will be affected by the high court’s ruling since most of the trial was focused on Trump’s behavior prior to being the president.
“The crux of the Manhattan trial is stuff that Trump did when he was campaigning for president, not when he was president,” Grasso said Tuesday. “It’s hard for me to wrap my head around how that would link to the new Supreme Court decision on the scope of absolute immunity. I just don’t see that really intersecting with that case in a meaningful way.”
Grasso believes that prosecutors are “doing the right thing” by allowing the former president to make his case, but that the effort from Trump’s team will likely fall flat.
“Obviously, I’m not surprised that they’re doing this,” Grasso said. “They’re doing everything they possibly can. Who can blame them?”
Trump had cited this very possibility when he tried to get the trial indefinitely suspended earlier this year, telling Merchan in March that moving along with the trial prior to the presidential immunity ruling would open the court up to “unnecessary risk.”
“President Trump respectfully submits that an adjournment of the trial is appropriate to await further guidance from the Supreme Court, which should facilitate the appropriate application of the presidential immunity doctrine in this case to the evidence the people intend to offer at trial,” Trump claimed in the filing.
But Merchan shot down Trump's request — one of several last-ditch efforts from Trump to delay the start of the New York criminal trial.
Ultimately, the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president kicked off in mid-April. In late May, a jury of 12 Manhattanites found Trump guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money scheme related to his 2016 presidential run.
The jury unanimously agreed with prosecutors’ assertion that Trump fudged business documents to repay his then-lawyer Michael Cohen, who at Trump’s direction, paid hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels. At trial, Daniels testified that she had sex with Trump nearly two decades ago, an encounter that Trump became interested in illegally shielding from the public when he ran for president in 2016.
The historic verdict made Trump the first convicted felon to hold the office of the president.
Follow @Uebey
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
