Trump’s latest sentencing delay request spurs debate: 'Not an easy call' or 'hard pass'?

15 August 2024

Donald Trump is scheduled to be sentenced for his New York State criminal conviction win 34 felony fraud counts next month, but on Thursday the ex-president, who was granted immunity for official acts by the U.S. Supreme Court, asked Judge Juan Merchan for another delay, until after the November election – claiming not granting one would amount to “election interference.”

Legal experts seem split on what could, and should, happen.

“Trump, who was convicted for his criminal efforts to conceal information from the public in the days leading up to the 2016 election, is now asking the judge to delay sentencing and therefore deprive the public of relevant information in the days leading up to the 2024 election,” noted national security attorney Brad Moss. “It’s a pattern with this guy.”

It’s a pattern that’s being noticed.

“Trump also feverishly tried to delay the start of the trial earlier this year, filing successive unsuccessful interim stay requests in a state appellate court the week before opening arguments in April,” Courthouse News reports. “Like those efforts, legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold believes this latest letter to be a longshot ask. Gold, a criminal defense attorney at the New Jersey-based Helmer, Conley & Kasselman, told Courthouse News on Thursday that Merchan is likely ‘fed up’ with Trump’s constant delay efforts.”

“The judge seems aggravated, and I would be too,” Gold said.

Gold also suggests Judge Merchan might move ahead with the September 18 sentencing date, but hold off on the effective date until after the November election.

Professor of law and MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney sees no need for compromise and suggests the judge should stick to the schedule. She writes: “Judge Merchan should give this one a hard pass.”

But MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin is looking deeply into Trump’s letter, and suggests the “conventional wisdom” that Trump will not obtain a delay might be flawed.

Also flawed, Rubin writes, is Trump’s attorneys’ letter to Judge Merchan, which “highlights how ill equipped the Supreme Court’s immunity decision is to resolve key procedural questions in the NY case,” she notes.

After looking at Trump’s thrice-denied conflict of interest claims and recusal request against Judge Merchan, Rubin adds, “Then there’s the timing of the letter. Judge Merchan moved Trump’s sentencing from 7/11 to 9/18 1) because of Trump’s post-immunity decision motion to set aside the verdict 2) and did so the day after SCOTUS ruled. They’ve known sentencing was scheduled for 9/18 for 6 weeks.”

She then goes back to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling for Trump on presidential immunity.

“In the ordinary course, a New York defendant would have to proceed to sentencing before a verdict is appealable. But *this* New York defendant brought a successful SCOTUS case that applies, at least in part, here,” she explains.

And because Trump is being treated differently by the highest court in the land, she explains, “specifically, the Court ruled that a denial of immunity is appealable before trial. Does that mean the denial of a motion to set aside the verdict (predicated on the admission of official act evidence) must also be immediately appealable? Trump says yes.”

Here’s where her suggestion that the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, at least in part, is flawed, comes into play:

“Parsing the language of the majority opinion closely, the Court’s holdings that immunity decisions must be made ‘at the outset’ of the case and are appealable before trial don’t necessarily apply to evidence. But it’s also not crystal clear that they don’t.”

Rubin concludes, “strip away the baseless accusations of judicial conflict & prosecutorial malice, and the letter raises a serious, unanswered procedural question. I’ll predict Merchan will forge ahead–but to me, even Team Trump’s strategic delay notwithstanding, it’s not an easy call.”

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