Judge in Trump's hush money trial delays sentencing following Supreme Court immunity ruling
The judge overseeing Donald Trump's New York criminal case approved a delay of the former president's sentencing Tuesday after his lawyers asked for more time to argue that the Supreme Court's immunity decision calls for a new trial.
The judge overseeing Donald Trump's New York criminal case approved a delay of the former president's sentencing Tuesday after his lawyers asked for more time to argue that the Supreme Court's immunity decision calls for a new trial.
The sentencing hearing, previously scheduled for July 11, will now take place Sept. 18 at the earliest, according to a letter posted on the court's docket.
The delay guarantees that Trump won't be sentenced until after he is formally nominated for president at the Republican National Convention, which begins July 15, and that sentencing will happen less than two months before the presidential election.
Trump's team moved quickly to leverage the Supreme Court's ruling Monday, sending a letter to New York state Judge Juan Merchan asking to brief him on how it affects Trump’s felony conviction on 34 counts of falsified business records. In a letter Tuesday, prosecutors said they weren't opposed to delaying the sentencing hearing, though they signaled they believe the effort to toss the verdict out is "without merit."
The Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of crimes that would normally be misdemeanors but were escalated to felonies in this case. Prosecutors argued he doctored his internal business records while he was serving in the White House to disguise the fact that as president-elect, he'd ordered his former lawyer Michael Cohen to pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
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