The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s trial on 34 counts of corporate falsification announced Monday that he is delaying the former president’s sentencing until September so he can hear arguments regarding the Supreme Court’s latest ruling on presidential immunity.
“The date of the ruling, July 11, 2024, has therefore expired,” said the judge. Juan Merchan wrote. “The court’s decision will be made out of the calendar on September 6, 2024, and the case is adjourned until September 18, 2024, at 10:00 a.m. for the imposition of the sentence, if still necessary, or other proceedings.”
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump sent a letter to Merchan on Monday asking him to overturn the jury’s verdict on 34 counts of falsifying corporate records.
They argue that the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity invalidates a ruling that found Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors based their case in part on evidence dating to the months after Trump became president.
Prosecutors from the Manhattan office of U.S. District Attorney Alvin Bragg said they would agree to delay Trump’s July 11 sentencing but would explain to Merchan why the jury’s verdict should stand.
“While we find defendant’s arguments without merit, we do not oppose his motion for leave to prosecute and his purported request for a stay of sentencing pending the determination of his motion,” wrote Joshua Steinglass, one of the prosecutors in the case.
‘Official acts’?
In just over a week, Merchan was set to announce his sentence following the historic jury verdict of guilty of a former president. While most analysts believed Trump would not receive any prison time, given that this was his first conviction, other factors, such as his repeated violation of Merchan’s gag orders imposed during the trial, made that uncertain.
But the Supreme Court’s decision Monday on whether presidents are protected from prosecution will delay Trump’s sentencing until at least Sept. 18.
The decision and Merchan’s statement also leave open the possibility that Trump will face no repercussions despite the New York jury’s guilty verdicts. That’s because the Supreme Court has ruled that presidents cannot be tried for alleged crimes related to their official duties.
“The President is not above the law. But under our system of separate powers, the President may not be sued for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the landmark ruling.
Merchan will have to decide whether Trump’s sending reimbursement checks from the White House to his former lawyer Michael Cohen after his inauguration constitutes an official act. He will also hear arguments from Trump’s lawyers that much of the testimony in the case came from presidential aides, rendering it inadmissible.
Last year, however, a federal judge rejected Trump’s argument that presidential immunity protected him from prosecution in the hush-money case, because the payment to Daniels was a personal act, not an official act.
“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was purely a personal matter of the President — a cover-up of an embarrassing event,” wrote United States District Judge Alvin Hellerstein. “Hush money paid to an adult film star is unrelated to the official acts of a President. It in no way reflects the color of the President’s official duties.”
Why the timeline is important
While much of the evidence surrounding Trump’s alleged deal with National Enquirer publisher David Pecker and Cohen to block damaging stories about the 2016 presidential candidate occurred before Trump was elected, much of it came afterward, as a timeline of key events in the case shows.
In its ruling Monday, the Supreme Court gave presidents extraordinary latitude to argue that actions taken in office are immune from prosecution. At the very least, the court gave Trump’s lawyers another avenue of appeal, should Merchan convict Trump after hearing his lawyers’ arguments.
