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Donald Trump heard what is surely welcome news on Friday, when his Manhattan hush-money judge delayed the former president’s September 18 sentencing until three weeks after the presidential election.
In a four-page decision, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan explained that he based his decision on Trump’s ongoing legal challenges to his conviction.
“The Defendant has the right to a sentencing hearing that respects and protects his constitutional rights,” Merchan wrote, noting the case is “fraught with complexities” given “the unique time frame.”
Trump had requested the delay to avoid the potential “politically prejudicial” impact a public sentencing could have on the election.
The sentencing won’t happen at all if Merchan’s next major hush-money decision, due September 16, overturns Trump’s verdict or the indictment itself on presidential immunity grounds.
Manhattan prosecutors had deferred to the judge on a sentencing date, though they have fought hard against tossing the case, arguing that immunity is irrelevant to the lion’s share of evidence used to convict him.
“This is not a decision this court makes lightly but it is a decision which in the court’s view best advances the interests of justice,” Merchan wrote.
“This matter is one that stands alone, in a unique place in this Nation’s history,” Merchan wrote.
Still, he wrote, the decision to delay sentencing “has now been decided in the same way this court has decided every other issue that has arisen since the origination of this case, applying the facts and the law after carefully considering the issues and respective arguments of the parties.”
His decision he added, was crafted “to ensure that the integrity of the proceeding is protected, justice is served, and the independence of this judiciary kept firmly intact.”
The delay now robs the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, of key fodder for attacking her Republican opponent in the final weeks of the campaign.
Trump faced anywhere from zero to four years behind bars for his May 30 conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He might also have been handed an embarassing new title: probationer. Trump could have also been ordered to serve community service.
Any sentence would have been almost certainly put on hold pending appeal, as is common in non-violent, low-level felony cases.
But Trump would have had to suffer — in person — through the sentencing proceeding itself.
Several hundred journalists would have watched in a lower Manhattan courtroom as first a prosecutor and then the judge scolded Trump for conspiring to hide a $130,000 hush-money payment that kept porn actress Stormy Daniels quiet just 11 days before the 2016 election.
Details of the scandal would have back been back in the headlines, and Harris would have been able to chide him on the details from the stump, quoting from his sentencing and the scolding that came with it.
The delay has a financial benefit as well.
Only after sentencing would Trump have faced the possible loss of his liquor licenses in New Jersey. Officials there have threatened to revoke the licenses at his three Garden State golf courses because of his new felony record. They have said they will wait until after sentencing, as required by state law.
With so much at stake, it’s no wonder Trump has repeatedly sought to derail his sentencing since July when the US Supreme Court found that former presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution for official acts.
Trump has fought to overturn his conviction on immunity-based challenges lodged in state court and in federal court.
Those challenges are still pending.
