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MANHATTAN (CN) — Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s Manhattan hush-money case are deferring to the judge to determine whether a delay in the former president’s Sept. 18 sentencing is necessary.
Trump last week asked New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to push his sentencing off until after the November presidential election, arguing that the current schedule could unduly influence the election process since he would be sentenced after the start of early voting.
“By adjourning the sentencing until after that election … the court would reduce, even if not eliminate, issues regarding the integrity of any future proceedings,” Trump claimed in a letter to the court filed last week.
Merchan already delayed the sentencing once. After Trump was convicted by a Manhattan jury in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records, he was initially set to be sentenced July 11. But the judge pushed it back after a bombshell ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on presidential immunity, which gave Trump the opportunity to argue against his conviction on those new grounds.
Merchan is set to rule on Trump’s presidential immunity claim on Sept. 16 — two days before he’s currently due to be sentenced. The timing, Trump argued last week, wouldn’t give him “adequate time to assess and pursue state and federal appellate options in response to any adverse filing.”
On Monday, Manhattan prosecutors acknowledged that it was the first they were hearing of Trump’s intent to appeal Merchan’s potential immunity ruling. They claim it’s a legal gray area whether the ruling would be immediately appealable at all, and that “there are strong reasons why it should not be.”
“Nonetheless, given the defense’s newly-stated position, we defer to the court on whether an adjournment is warranted to allow for orderly appellate litigation of that question, or to reduce the risk of a disruptive stay from an appellate court pending consideration of that question,” prosecutors wrote in a two-page filing dated Aug. 16 but made public on Monday. “The people are prepared to appear for sentencing on any future date the court sets.”
Trump isn’t arguing that presidential immunity should preclude him from prosecution in this case. He’s merely claiming that some of the case’s evidence — like testimony from his White House subordinates and tweets he sent while president — should not have been presented to the jury since they were “official acts” he took as president.
Because of that, prosecutors say it isn’t immediately clear whether Trump should be able to appeal Merchan’s impending ruling on the evidentiary concerns.
Their Monday letter barely acknowledged Trump’s other reasons for delaying his sentencing, stating that “none of defendant’s remaining arguments merit any consideration.” The prosecutors chided Trump for continuing to beat the drum on “false claims of a potential conflict” from Merchan “that have already been rejected over and over by this court.”
In his letter last week, Trump again bemoaned the fact that Merchan’s daughter works at Authentic, a political consulting firm that has worked with Democrats — including Trump’s 2024 opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s an argument he’s made unsuccessfully numerous times in the past, but Trump this time explicitly called out Authentic’s co-founder Mike Nellis for tweeting about the situation.
Prosecutors called the claim entirely irrelevant. “Defendant’s ostensibly new argument about the court’s family member’s co-worker’s tweets is bizarre and has nothing to do with the post-trial schedule,” they wrote.
It’s unclear when Merchan will rule on a new sentencing date for Trump, who could face prison time after jurors concluded that Trump, apparently concerned that another scandal could hurt his presidential stock, commanded then-attorney Michael Cohen to pay $130,000 to adult film star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about a tryst with Trump 10 years earlier.
Trump then forged company records to repay Cohen, the jury ruled. He falsely labeled invoices, ledger entries and checks as payments for standard legal fees, even signing the scrutinized checks to Cohen from the Oval Office in 2017.
Merchan has yet to rule on Trump’s bid to delay his sentencing.
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