A state judge in New York City on Friday, issuing a ruling that seemed to make him uncomfortable, put off until after the November 5 election the sentencing of former President Donald Trump for 34 guilty verdicts.
Although Judge Juan M. Merchan said, in a four-page ruling, that he was acting to avoid affecting the presidential election, the postponement was a huge political benefit for Trump’s candidacy. Voters across America will now go to the polls without knowing how Trump will be punished in the only case in which – so far – he has been convicted.
The judge delayed a sentencing hearing from September 18 until November 26 – three weeks after the election, with added time for any uncertainty about the outcome to be resolved. In addition, the judge delayed a decision on Trump’s pending plea to erase the New York verdicts, dismiss all of the charges, and thus bar any new trial. Judge Merchan had said earlier that he would decide that issue by September 16; he set a new date of November 12 – one week after the election.
Trump’s challenge to the entire case is based on the theory that, as a former President, he has complete legal immunity to criminal prosecution. Although Trump’s lawyers made that challenge before his trial in New York City began, the theory gained new force after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a constitutional ruling on July 1, created broad immunity to any President charged with crime – at least for official acts they took while in office. Judge Merchan and a federal judge in New York had rejected the immunity claim before the jury convicted Trump at the end of May.
Friday’s ruling by Judge Merchan was only the latest example of how Trump’s candidacy for a new term in the White House has worked significantly to his legal advantage. His lawyers for months have succeeded in getting delays in all four of the cases in which he has been charged with crimes.
They also have succeeded in getting one of the cases dismissed without a trial – the historic federal case accused him of illegally taking, keeping and mishandling highly classified national-security documents, at his private club in Florida – Mar-a-Lago. Federal prosecutors are appealing to a higher court to try to revive that case.
On Thursday, in the federal case in Washington, D.C., accusing Trump of multiple crimes for trying to stay in office after his defeat in the 2020 election, the trial judge set up a pre-trial schedule that will involved over the weeks remaining before the November election, but there is no chance that the case would ever go to trial until at least sometime next year.
After a special congressional committee’s lengthy probe of the January 6, 2021, violent attack on the U.S. Capitol made it obvious that Trump would likely facing multiple criminal charges, he announced his candidacy on November 15, 2022.
In the nearly 22 months since then, his defense lawyers have won delay after delay, and then, most significantly, won a surprise constitutional victory from the Supreme Court on the immunity issue.
If Judge Merchan were now to find that Trump is fully protected from the New York charges, based on immunity, the case would end at least in that court. Whether state prosecutors would be able to appeal such a decision is not fully clear at this point.
Trump’s sentencing hearing will go ahead only if Trump loses on the immunity issue. That’s the question Judge Merchan will now be deciding on November 12.
In his ruling Friday, the judge relied in part upon the fact that state prosecutors, citing complications in the security arrangements for a sentencing hearing, had told the judge that they did not oppose postponing Trump’s sentencing.
Trump’s attorneys, in asking for the delays, had argued that the mere fact that he was on trial in a criminal case was a threat to his candidacy and that a prison sentence that he was risking would be a major blow to his campaign.
The judge said he was granting the delay requests “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 [Trump] is a candidate.”
His court, the judge said, “is a fair, impartial, and apolitical institution.” He said further that the delays were granted to “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.”
He made no specific mention of the Trump team’s repeated arguments that any sentencing for his New York crimes would have a harmful impact on him among voters across the nation.
Between now and the November election, Trump’s legal troubles will not be entirely out of public view. In the January 6 case, growing out of Trump’s attempt to remain in office, the federal prosecutors are scheduled to file a “comprehensive” legal brief that will spell out the evidence that they believe is not barred by presidential immunity and that they plan to offer if, and when, the trial of that case begins.
That brief, which is due later this month – on September 26. That filing does have the potential to be quite damning for Trump, and might even refer – for example – to evidence about January 6 provided by former Vice President Mike Pence. However, that brief might be wholly or partially filed under seal, and might not be made public, at least immediately.
In the coming weeks, there also may be further developments in the federal prosecutors’ appeal of the trial judge’s dismissal of the Florida documents case, and in the state prosecution in Georgia, which is a state-level case also growing out of the January 21 election interference incidents.
There will be no finality, however, in any of the Trump cases before the voters go to the polls in about eight weeks.
