Judge delays Trump sentencing in criminal case after Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity
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The judge who presided over former President Donald Trump’s criminal case delayed his sentencing date late Tuesday.
Judge Juan Merchan’s decision comes after Trump and his legal team pushed to overturn the criminal conviction on Monday, which made Trump the first president in history to be convicted of a felony after a jury found him guilty on all counts of falsifying business records. Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove also wrote in their letter to Merchan that the July 11 sentencing date be set aside following the Supreme Court’s ruling regarding presidential immunity.
The 6-3 Supreme Court ruling protects any president from prosecution regarding official acts taken while in office and bars prosecution from using official acts as evidence to criminalize a president, something Trump’s legal team says they requested and were denied during trial in the criminal case.
“Under Trump, this official-acts evidence should never have been put before the jury. Consistent with arguments that we made before and during the trial, the Supreme Court held in Trump that President Trump ‘may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts,’” Blanche and Bove wrote in their letter.
The prosecution team, led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, responded Tuesday to Trump’s requests in their own letter to Merchan:
“Although we believe (the) defendant’s arguments to be without merit, we do not oppose his request for leave to file and his putative request to adjourn sentencing pending determination of his motion,” the letter said.
The new sentencing date set by Merchan is scheduled for Sept. 18, two months after the Republican National Convention, where Trump is set to become the GOP’s official presidential nominee.
“The July 11, 2024, sentencing date is therefore vacated. The Court’s decision will be rendered off-calendar on September 6, 2024, and the matter is adjourned to September 18, 2024, at 10:00 a.m. for the imposition of sentence, if such is still necessary, or other proceedings,” Merchan said in the response letter to both parties, per Fox News.
