Judge delays ruling on whether to scrap Trump’s conviction in hush money case
Court Watch - POSTED: 2024/11/13 14:06
Court Watch - POSTED: 2024/11/13 14:06
A judge has postponed a decision on whether to undo President-elect Donald Trump’s hush money conviction as prosecutors consider how to proceed in light of last week’s election and his lawyers argue for dismissal so he can run the country.
The postponement announced Tuesday comes at a dramatic and dynamic point in the New York case, which focused on how Trump accounted for payments to a porn actor before the 2016 election and produced a first-ever conviction of a former commander-in-chief.
Sentencing had been set for Nov. 26. But Manhattan prosecutors now say they’re reassessing, and they appear open to the possibility that the proceedings can’t go as planned.
“These are unprecedented circumstances,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo wrote in an email to the court. He said prosecutors need to consider how to balance the “competing interests” of the jury’s verdict and the presidency.
Trump lawyer Emil Bove, meanwhile, argued the case must be thrown out altogether “to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern.”
The messages were exchanged over the weekend and released Tuesday, when Judge Juan M. Merchan had been set to rule on Trump lawyers’ earlier request to toss his conviction for a different reason — because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this summer on presidential immunity.
Instead, Merchan told Trump’s lawyers he’d halt proceedings and delay the ruling until at least Nov. 19 so that prosecutors can suggest a way forward. Both sides agreed to the one-week postponement.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung heralded the delay. He said in a statement that the president-elect’s win makes it “abundantly clear that Americans want an immediate end to the weaponization of our justice system, including this case, which should have never been filed.”
Prosecutors declined to comment. A jury convicted Trump in May of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. The payout was to buy her silence about claims that she had sex with Trump.
Trump says they didn’t have sex, denies any wrongdoing and maintains the prosecution was a political tactic meant to harm his latest campaign. Trump is a Republican. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the case, is a Democrat, as is Merchan.
Just over a month after the verdict, the Supreme Court ruled that ex-presidents can’t be prosecuted for actions they took in the course of running the country, and prosecutors can’t cite those actions even to bolster a case centered on purely personal conduct.
Trump’s lawyers cited that ruling to argue that the hush money jury got some evidence it shouldn’t have, such as Trump’s presidential financial disclosure form and testimony from some White House aides.
Prosecutors disagreed and said the evidence in question was only “a sliver” of their case.
Trump’s criminal conviction was a first for any ex-president. It left the 78-year-old facing the possibility of a fine, probation or up to four years in prison.