The sentencing of President-elect Donald Trump in New York for his criminal conviction for falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment was indefinitely postponed by a judge Friday.
Trump was convicted by a Manhattan jury in May on 34 felony counts related to falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in the final days of the 2016 election. Judge Juan Merchan agreed with the request by parties to commence filing motions to dismiss the case, adjourning the previously planned Nov. 26 sentencing date.
“It is further ordered that the joint application for a stay of sentencing is granted to the extent that the November 26, 2024, date is adjourned,” Merchan wrote in a brief order, while also setting a schedule for Trump’s dismissal motion in December.
Merchan also ordered Trump to file his formal motion asking for dismissal by Dec. 2 and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to respond by Dec. 9, and he will subsequently decide how to proceed.
Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law professor emeritus and a veteran appellate lawyer who worked for Trump during his first impeachment trial, told the Washington Examiner that the decision potentially sets forth the process for further appellate review if Trump’s motion to dismiss is denied.
“He’ll have the opportunity to appeal that decision if they don’t dismiss it, and if he can’t appeal it, he can bring it writ of mandamus,” Dershowitz said, adding he believes this “sets in motion the fact that we will see an appellate court review the merits of this case.”
Earlier this week, Bragg’s office did not object to delaying the sentencing and advised Merchan that proceedings could begin over Trump’s efforts to dismiss the case.
Bragg’s office is vehement about sustaining the jury’s conviction, saying in a message to Merchan earlier this week that prosecutors would be open to resuming sentencing after Trump’s term in the White House ends in 2029.
Trump decried the New York indictment and trial as a “witch hunt” brought by his political enemies as an effort to prevent his return to the Oval Office, highlighting that Bragg started his June 2019 campaign for office on a promise to investigate the then-sitting president.
“I have investigated Trump and his children and held them accountable for their misconduct with the Trump Foundation,” Bragg said in December 2020. “I also sued the Trump administration more than 100 times for the travel ban, the separation of children from their families at the border. So I know that work.”
Trump has denied allegations at the center of the indictment, which are predicated on porn star Stormy Daniels’s claims that they engaged in an affair, and testimony by ex-attorney Michael Cohen that Trump sought to distort financial records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels.
The president-elect has faced relentless headwinds over efforts to dismiss the case before, during, and after the trial. Supporters of Trump and legal experts alike have called into question the logistically untenable prospects of sentencing and possibly jailing Trump, given that he will return to the Oval Office by Jan. 20, 2025.
These developments in his New York criminal case come as special counsel Jack Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2022 to head up the Jan. 6, 2021, case and the classified documents case against him, has signaled plans to step down and end those indictments, citing long-standing Justice Department policy against indicting sitting presidents.
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Trump is also awaiting an appellate court’s decision surrounding a separate civil judgment against him in the Empire State, brought by Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who succeeded in imposing a nearly $500 million fine on him for falsely inflating the value of his assets to achieve favorable loans and insurance premiums. He has likewise denied the allegations in that case.
A New York appeals court heard arguments in September reviewing Judge Arthur Engoron’s hefty judgment against the Trump Organization, Trump, and his adult sons. Appellate judges cast a somewhat skeptical eye on portions of James’s case, hinting they might perhaps diminish Engoron’s decision, although to what extent is unclear at this time.
