On Tuesday, New York prosecutors informed the court presiding over Donald Trump’s hush money prosecution that the president-elect’s attorneys should delay his sentence until they submit additional legal reasons requesting that the case be dismissed.
Judge Juan Merchanto would need to approve the motion from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office on Tuesday for it to become official. Prosecutors had previously asked Merchan to grant extensions.
The DA’s office requested last week that the judge temporarily halt the proceedings while it assessed the effect of Trump’s election victory on the case, casting doubt on Merchan’s tentative plan to sentence Trump later this month on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
According to prosecutor Matthew Colangelo, the motion was made in response to “a number of arguments” made by Trump’s legal team that the prosecution should not proceed.
According to Colangelo’s letter to the judge dated November 10, “The People agree that these are unprecedented circumstances and that 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 or (2) the Office of the President.”
Two days prior to Merchan’s scheduled decision on whether to reverse the verdict in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity earlier this year, the letter was sent. The judge would have been able to move on with Trump’s sentence, which was tentatively set for November 26, if the case had been decided against him.
However, the judge approved the stay requests from both sides and ordered the DA’s office until Tuesday to provide a document outlining its “view of appropriate steps going forward.”
The jury conviction was the first time a former president has ever been found guilty of a felony, and it was the only one of four criminal cases that were launched against Trump after he left office in 2021 to go to trial.
In order to conceal his repayment of a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels by his then-attorney Michael Cohen in the final days of the 2016 election, Trump was accused last year of fabricating company papers.
Trump has refuted Daniels’ assertion that she had a sexual encounter with him in 2006.
In May, Trump was found guilty on all counts.
Trump’s tweets criticizing Cohen, which prosecutors claimed were part of a pressure campaign to keep him silent, and testimony from former Trump White House aides Hope Hicks and Madeleine Westerhout were among the evidence presented throughout the trial.
Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s July 1 decision that expanded the scope of presidential immunity, Trump’s attorneys argued that it was incorrect for any of the evidence to be shown to the jury. They claimed that the conviction and the charges should be dropped since the evidence influenced the jury.
In a court brief, prosecutors from Bragg’s office contended that the high court’s ruling had no bearing on the evidence and that, even if it had, there would still be no reason to overturn the verdict due to the other overwhelming proof of the defendant’s guilt.
Trump said the lawsuit was politically motivated since Bragg is a Democrat, but he has denied any misconduct in it. Additionally, he called Merchan corrupt and incompetent and accused Black man Bragg of racism.
The two federal criminal charges against the president-elect are being closed by the Justice Department.
The other ongoing criminal action against the president-elect is the extensive racketeering lawsuit filed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who claims that Trump and more than a dozen co-conspirators unlawfully attempted to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
While Trump and a few of his co-defendants attempt to have Willis removed from the case due to a purported conflict of interest, that case has been put on hold. Trump’s attorneys have argued that due to constitutional concerns, any trial of Trump would have to wait until after he leaves office in 2029, even if she is permitted to continue working on the case.
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