Trump's lawyers seek postponement of sentencing until after election

Attorneys for Donald Trump asked the judge overseeing the former president’s Manhattan criminal case to postpone his sentencing on 34 felonies, now set for Sept. 18, until after November’s presidential election, according to Politico.

In a letter to the court, Trump’s lawyers noted that the sentencing for the Republican presidential nominee’s conviction on falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star is currently scheduled to take place after the start of early voting.

And they argued that the sentencing should be delayed in order to allow Trump to weigh appellate options in response to Justice Juan Merchan’s upcoming ruling on whether Trump’s conviction should be tossed out in light of the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision on presidential immunity.

Merchan is set to rule on Sept. 16, two days before the scheduled sentencing, on whether the presidential immunity decision should have an impact on Trump’s conviction. If Merchan — as many legal observers expect — rejects Trump’s bid to overturn the conviction on immunity grounds, the judge should not proceed to sentencing until higher courts can review that ruling, Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote.

“[S]etting aside naked election-interference objectives,” they wrote, “there is no valid countervailing reason for the Court to keep the current sentencing date on the calendar.”

Trump’s lawyers bid is likely a long shot. Merchan already pushed the sentencing from July to September in order to weigh the immunity ruling, and noted in a recent filing that the Sept. 18 sentencing date “remains unchanged.”

But Trump has succeeded in some of his numerous attempts to delay aspects of the proceedings in the Manhattan case, including pushing back the start of the trial in the spring by three weeks due to a document dispute.

For his conviction on 34 felony counts, Trump faces a range of possible punishments, including community service, home confinement and up to four years in prison. Legal experts have said they believe it is unlikely Trump will be sentenced to prison, in part because he is a first-time offender. And even if he is sentenced to prison he is unlikely to have to serve time until after the appeals process has been exhausted, which could take at least several months — and if he’s elected president after being sentenced to prison, the sentence almost certainly would be suspended while he’s in office.

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