Judge Juan Merchan delayed the sentencing of former President Donald Trump in his Manhattan hush-money case until November 26, exactly three weeks after the general election.
Trump, who was convicted on all 34 charges in the trial in May, was initially scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, and that date was changed to September 18, which would be only seven weeks before the election. Merchan again postponed the sentencing in a ruling on Friday after Trump and his legal team had pushed for the sentencing date to be moved back to after the November 5 election, The New York Times reported.
Trump has maintained his innocence in the case, which stems from Trump being accused of improperly masking reimbursements to repay his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, for a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence on an alleged extramarital affair by classifying them as legal expenses. The former president argues that the case, which was brought by Manhattan Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg, is “election interference.”
Merchan said that he was delaying the sentencing “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.”
“The Court is a fair, impartial, and apolitical institution,” he continued, adding that his decision “should dispel any suggestion that the Court will have issued any decision or imposed sentence either to give an advantage to, or to create a disadvantage for, any political party and or any candidate for any office.”
Trump’s legal team sought to move the Manhattan case from Merchan’s state courtroom to a federal court before the sentencing, but earlier this week, that effort was shot down by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton.
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“This court does not have jurisdiction to hear Mr. Trump’s arguments concerning the propriety of the New York trial,” Hellerstein wrote. “Instead, the proper recourse for parties seeking to remedy alleged errors made during a state trial is to pursue a state appeal or, at the highest level, to seek review from the Supreme Court of the United States.”
Shortly after Trump’s conviction in May, legal scholars said that the Supreme Court could ultimately step in.
“Ultimately, I think the Supreme Court, if he doesn’t win on appeal, will take this up and reverse,” Attorney Roger Severino told “Morning Wire” at the time. “This is a political prosecution. We are better than this as a country and this cannot stand.”
“This is so shocking and unprecedented that we’re even discussing the possibility of putting political opponents in jail in the middle of an election,” he added.
Daniel Chaitin contributed to this report.