Sentencing in Donald Trump’s criminal trial for concealed payments to a porn star, scheduled in nine days, has been postponed until September 18, the first concrete effect of the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday that extended the former president’s immunity.
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“The July 11 sentencing date is therefore vacated,” and “adjourned to September 18 if still necessary,” approximately six weeks before the date of the U.S. presidential election on November 5, 2024, New York Magistrate Juan Merchan wrote in a decision issued Tuesday.
This decision considerably lightens the judicial schedule of the candidate for the White House in the immediate future, because the sentence was initially to be pronounced four days before the Republican convention in Milwaukee (July 15-18), where Donald Trump is to be officially invested as presidential candidate.
Judge Merchan, who presided over Donald Trump’s trial in April and May, made his decision hours after the Manhattan prosecutor’s office said it was open to a delay.
Just hours after the Supreme Court’s decision, Donald Trump’s lawyers wrote to the judge on Monday asking for the historic verdict that found the former US president guilty of 34 counts of falsifying accounting records to hide the $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels at the tail end of the 2016 presidential campaign to be overturned.
The judge did not rule on the merits.
Some of the events being examined during the trial took place when Donald Trump was a presidential candidate and therefore could not be protected by any possible immunity.
The money had notably been paid to the actress by Donald Trump’s former confidant and lawyer, Michael Cohen, at the very end of the 2016 campaign. But Donald Trump is being prosecuted for falsifications in the accounts of his companies during the reimbursement of Michael Cohen, which occurred in 2017 when he was in the White House.
“During the trial and its closing arguments, the prosecution placed a highly prejudicial emphasis on evidence derived from official acts, such as testimony about events that occurred in the Oval Office … social media posts (on Donald Trump’s accounts as president) and records of phone calls involving Donald Trump while he was in office in 2017,” the Republican billionaire’s lawyers argue in a preparatory document for their appeal, made public Tuesday.
As the first former US president to be found guilty of criminal charges by a jury, Donald Trump theoretically faces a maximum of four years in prison. But Judge Juan Merchan can also choose to impose an alternative sentence to prison, such as a suspended sentence. In any case, the Republican candidate will be able to appeal, which would likely result in a suspension of the sentence before the presidential election on November 5.
