New York judge postpones verdict in hush money case against Trump until after election

NEW YORK (AP) — Sentencing in Donald Trump's hush money case has been delayed until after the November election, giving the former president a hard-fought reprieve as he enters the home stretch of his current campaign and deals with the aftermath of his criminal conviction.

In a ruling Friday, Manhattan District Judge Juan M. Merchan postponed Trump's sentencing until Nov. 26, three weeks after the last votes are cast in the U.S. presidential election. Sentencing had been scheduled for Sept. 18, about seven weeks before Election Day.

The delay is Trump's latest stroke of luck in an election campaign that has been fraught with numerous legal risks for him.

The new date means voters will choose their next president without knowing whether the Republican nominee will go to prison or even be convicted. Merchan now plans to rule on November 12 on Trump's request to overturn the conviction and dismiss the case based on the US Supreme Court's July ruling on presidential immunity.

Merchan said he had postponed sentencing “to avoid any appearance, however unjustified, that the proceedings have been influenced or are attempting to be influenced by the upcoming presidential election in which the defendant is a candidate.”

“The court is a fair, impartial and non-political institution,” he added, writing that his decision “should dispel any impression to the contrary.”

Trump – who had just been following the appeals hearings in a sex abuse case in a nearby federal court – announced the delay in the verdict. In a post on his Truth Social platform, he called the case a “witch hunt” and a “political attack” and reiterated that he had done nothing wrong.

“This process should rightly be stopped as we prepare for the most important election in our country's history,” he wrote.

Prosecutors said they were ready to announce the verdict on the new date.

“A jury of 12 New Yorkers quickly and unanimously found Donald Trump guilty on 34 counts,” said Danielle Filson, a spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat.

Trump's lawyers pushed for the delay on several levels, filing petitions with the judge and asking a federal court to intervene, arguing that punishing the former president in the midst of his campaign to retake the White House would amount to election interference.

Prosecutors did not comment on Trump's request for a delay, citing Merchan's objections.

A federal judge on Tuesday denied Trump's request that the U.S. District Court in Manhattan remove the case from Merchan's state court. Trump is appealing the federal court's decision and has asked the appellate judges to stop the post-sentencing proceedings.

Trump faced the possibility of multiple criminal trials this election year, having been impeached four times since March 2023. But a series of decisions over the past two months, culminating with Friday's postponement of sentencing, have largely cleared his legal schedule. The hush money case is the only one that has gone to trial.

In July, a judge dismissed a federal case in Florida accusing Trump of illegally hoarding classified documents. The Supreme Court's immunity decision caused significant delays in another federal case in Washington, DC, accusing Trump of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss. An election case in Georgia is also ongoing.

The Immunity Act limits the prosecution of former presidents for official acts and prevents prosecutors from using official acts as evidence of the illegality of a president's unofficial actions.

Election Day is November 5, but many states allow voters to cast their ballots earlier, and some states are even planning to delay the process until a few days before or after September 18.

Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime. A jury found him guilty in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels claims she and Trump had a sexual encounter 10 years earlier after meeting at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.

Prosecutors described the payment as part of an effort initiated by Trump to prevent voters from hearing salacious stories about him during his first presidential campaign. Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels and was later reimbursed by Trump, whose company recorded the reimbursements as legal expenses.

Trump insists the stories are false and that the reimbursements for legal work were made and recorded correctly. He has said he will appeal the ruling, but he cannot do so until he is convicted.

Democrats, who support their party's presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, have made his beliefs a focus of their messaging.

In speeches at the party's convention in Chicago last month, President Joe Biden called Trump a “convicted felon” running against a former prosecutor. Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett called Trump a “career criminal with 34 felonies, two articles of impeachment and a porn star record.”

Trump's Democratic opponent in 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sparked cries of “lock him up” from the convention audience when she joked that Trump “fell asleep at his own trial, and when he woke up, he made history in his own way: He was the first presidential candidate to have 34 convictions for a serious crime.”

Falsifying business records can be punishable by up to four years in prison. Other possible penalties include probation, a fine or conditional discharge. Trump would have to stay out of trouble to avoid additional punishment.

Trump's case “stands unique and occupies a unique place in the history of this nation,” Merchan wrote.

Public confidence “in the integrity of our justice system requires a criminal trial that focuses entirely on the jury's verdict and the balancing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances, without distraction or distortion,” he wrote.