President-elect Donald Trump’s sentencing in his New York hush money case was indefinitely delayed Tuesday after the judge overseeing his case agreed to postpone the proceedings to weigh whether the conviction can stand.
Lawyers for the president-elect say his May conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records should be overturned, following this year’s Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. United States granting presidents broad immunity for “official acts” undertaken while in office.
Trump’s attorney Emil Bove told the judge overseeing the case, Juan Merchan, that the sentencing scheduled for Nov. 26 should be put aside and the case dismissed “to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern.”
Matthew Colangelo, an attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, concurred in a letter to Merchan that sentencing should be put off for now.
“The People agree that these are unprecedented circumstances,” wrote Colangelo. “The arguments raised by defense counsel in correspondence to the People on Friday require careful consideration to ensure that any further steps in this proceeding appropriately balance the competing interests of (1) a jury verdict of guilt following trial that has the presumption of regularity; and (2) the Office of the President.”
The DA’s office asked Merchan to stay proceedings to give time for prosecutors to evaluate next steps, giving Nov. 19 as a deadline to “advise the Court regarding our view of appropriate steps going forward.”
Justice Merchan granted the motion and advised the DA to advise as to those appropriate steps by 10 a.m. on Nov. 19.
In May, Trump became the first American president, current or former, to be convicted of a crime, when a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records related to $130,000 in hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Trump — who in theory, could face up to four years in prison — has denied all wrongdoing and claimed the trial was “rigged.”
The hush money case was the only one of Trump’s four separate criminal indictments to actually go to trial. He was also facing two separate federal indictments for his alleged role in the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 and for allegedly hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, plus a RICO indictment in Georgia for his alleged attempts to overturn that state’s election results in 2020.
A federal judge dismissed the classified documents case this summer, a move that is currently being appealed; the Georgia case is paused pending rulings on a motion to dismiss prosecutor Fani Willis.
Meanwhile, Special Counsel Jack Smith was granted a pause on the Jan. 6 case following Trump’s reelection this month.
In 2023, Trump was also found liable for raping E. Jean Carroll in a civil case that resulted in $88 million in judgments against the former president, which are under appeal.
Meanwhile, the Trump Organization was found liable for fraudulently inflating the value of its real estate assets, with a judge issuing a $350 million judgment in that case.
