A New York judge on Friday postponed until November 26 the sentencing of Donald Trump, who is accused of paying hush money to a porn actress, saying the situation was “highly complicated.”
Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, had asked Judge Juan Marchan to postpone his sentencing until after the US presidential election. Trump was originally scheduled to be sentenced on September 18, just under two months before the election.
Trump’s legal team argued in August that while Trump is seeking to have his conviction overturned following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, there is not enough time before the verdict for the defense to appeal Judge Marchan’s upcoming ruling.
Marchant said Trump’s lawyers had “repeated unfounded grievances asserted in prior litigation that do not merit the attention of this Court,” but added that the combination of the presidential election and the Supreme Court’s decision “makes it difficult to meet the requirements for a sentencing hearing, if one is necessary.”
Marchan was scheduled to rule on the motion on Sept. 16.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision, related to a separate criminal case facing Trump, held that a president cannot be criminally prosecuted for official conduct and that evidence of the president’s official conduct cannot be used to prove a criminal case involving unofficial conduct.
Trump held a midday press conference in Manhattan on Friday not to discuss Judge Marchan’s ruling but to discuss an appeal hearing earlier in the day in the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. Trump’s lawyers were seeking a new trial in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit, in which Trump faces a potential multimillion-dollar judgment for assaulting and defaming the author in the mid-’90s.
During his nearly hour-long tirade, Trump repeatedly denied assaulting Carroll.
“She wrote a book and she made up a ridiculous story,” Trump said. “She made up a story, a fabricated story that I attacked her at Bergdorf Goodman.”
Those comments led to a separate defamation lawsuit filed earlier this year in which Carroll was awarded $83.3 million in damages. That case is also under appeal. Trump made no mention of a stay in the hush money lawsuit, saying only that “this lawsuit is disgraceful and should never have been filed.”
Prosecutors from Attorney General Blagg’s office argued that their case concerned Trump’s personal, not public, conduct and that there was no reason to overturn the verdict.
But prosecutors have not taken a position on Trump’s request to delay the sentence, saying in a filing on August 16 that they would defer to Marchand on the issue. They say the sentence could be delayed to allow an appeals court time to consider Trump’s arguments, and that such a move would be “disruptive.”
Marchan interpreted Bragg’s response to the request as a signal in favor of a delay. “A careful reading of (the response) can be interpreted as a consolidation of the motion,” Marchan wrote. “The public’s confidence in the integrity of our judicial system demands a sentencing hearing that is focused entirely on the jury’s verdict and on consideration of aggravating and mitigating factors without confusion or distortion.”
Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a felony and faces up to four years in prison, but Judge Marchan could impose a much shorter sentence or order probation or community service.
The trial itself was a spectacle, with Trump’s verbal attacks on Marchant, her daughter, the court and others ultimately leading Marchant to obtain a gag order barring Trump from making similar statements.
The delay means voters cannot assess the impact of the ruling before the election. Democrats were expected to highlight the ruling as a further sign of Trump’s unfitness to serve as president, while Republicans were expected to see it as a sign of political martyrdom for fighting a partisan and corrupt government.
“Judge Marchan should have sentenced Trump on September 18 and kept him out of custody while his appeal is pending,” MSNBC legal analyst Katie Pan said following the ruling. “This delay will only embolden Trump and fuel the narrative that there was some wrongdoing in this case.”