The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s historic hush money trial has postponed his sentencing indefinitely as he considers arguments from the president-elect’s legal team to toss the case altogether.
New York Justice Juan Merchan will hear legal briefs from Trump’s attorneys who claim that the conviction and sentencing of the president-elect will disrupt the “orderly transition of executive power” and be “uniquely destabilizing” to the country.
Trump’s sentencing date was postponed to November 26. That date is now off the calendar.
Instead, Judge Merchan has asked Trump’s attorneys to file their arguments by December 2, according to a filing in Manhattan criminal court on Friday.
Prosecutors will have until December 9 to reply.
The judge also is not accepting any other reply briefs on the matter, meaning he could render a decision relatively quickly, despite the months of delays demanded by Trump’s attorneys following the former president’s conviction on 34 felony counts on May 30.
Earlier this week, Manhattan prosecutors urged Judge Merchan to reject Trump’s upcoming attempts to toss out his conviction. District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his team did not oppose a delay in the proceedings and floated moving the sentencing hearing to 2029, “after the end of Defendant’s upcoming presidential term,” to preserve their case and the jury’s unanimous verdict against the former president.
While prosecutors are “mindful of the demands and obligations of the presidency” and understand that Trump’s return to the White House “will raise unprecedented legal questions,” they also “deeply respect the fundamental role of the jury in our constitutional system,” they wrote.
Trump’s lead criminal defense attorneys — both of whom were nominated by Trump for top roles at the Department of Justice — argued in a filing this week that the case should be “immediately” dismissed following his “overwhelming” victory.
“Just as a sitting President is completely immune from any criminal process, so too is President Trump as President-elect,” Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued in a filing Wednesday.
Merchan had already delayed a decision on Trump’s previous motion to toss his conviction on an already-rejected argument that evidence used against him at trial falls under the scope of a Supreme Court decision on “immunity” that shields the presidency from some criminal prosecution.
Trump — whose campaigns relied on a narrative of political persecution and retribution against a justice system he accuses of conspiring against him — continues to insist he has done nothing wrong.
Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign spokesperson and incoming White House communications director, called Merchan’s decision a “decisive win” as he conflated a jury’s verdict with the results of an election.
“President Trump won a landslide victory as the American People have issued a mandate to return him to office and dispose of all remnants of the Witch Hunt cases,” he said in a statement. “All of the sham lawfare attacks against President Trump are now destroyed and we are focused on Making America Great Again.”
A jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records in connection with a scheme to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose story about having sex with Trump threatened his 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump’s reimbursements to his then-attorney Michael Cohen, who paid off Daniels, were falsely recorded in accounting records as “legal expenses.”
Further delays in his sentencing, and the potential for the case to be frozen for four years or tossed altogether, mean that Trump will enter office having avoided any consquences for the allegations and convictions against him.
Special counsel Jack Smith is expected to begin closing the federal criminal cases against the former president, and an appeals court in Georgia has abruptly canceled arguments related to his election interference case in Fulton County.
