Judge delays ruling on whether to scrap Trump’s conviction in hush money case
A judge has postponed a decision on whether to undo President-elect Donald Trump’s conviction in his hush-money case because of a US Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.
New York Judge Juan M Merchan had been set to rule on Tuesday but instead, he told Mr Trump’s lawyers that he will delay the ruling until November 19.
According to emails filed in court, Mr Trump’s lawyers asked for the delay over the weekend, arguing there are “strong reasons for the requested stay, and eventually dismissal of the case in the interests of justice”.
Prosecutors agreed to the delay.
Mr Trump won back the White House a week ago but the legal question concerns the Republican’s status as a past president, not an impending one.
A jury convicted Mr Trump in May of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016.
The payout was to buy her silence about claims that she had sex with Mr Trump.
He says they did not, denies any wrongdoing and maintains the prosecution was a political tactic meant to harm his latest campaign.
Just over a month after the verdict, the Supreme Court ruled that ex-presidents cannot be prosecuted for actions they took in the course of running the country, and prosecutors cannot cite those actions even to bolster a case centred on purely personal conduct.
Mr Trump’s lawyers cited the ruling to argue that the hush money jury got some evidence it should not have, such as Mr Trump’s presidential financial disclosure form and testimony from some White House aides.
Prosecutors disagreed and said the evidence in question was only “a sliver” of their case.
Mr Trump’s criminal conviction was a first for any ex-president. It left him facing the possibility of punishment ranging from a fine or probation to up to four years in prison.
The case centred on how Mr Trump, 78, accounted for reimbursing his personal lawyer for the Daniels payment.
The lawyer, Michael Cohen, fronted the money. He later recouped it through a series of payments that Mr Trump’s company logged as legal expenses. Mr Trump, by then in the White House, signed most of the cheques himself.
Prosecutors said the designation was meant to cloak the true purpose of the payments and help cover up a broader effort to keep voters from hearing unflattering claims about him during his first campaign.
Mr Trump said that Mr Cohen was legitimately paid for legal services and that Ms Daniels’ story was suppressed to avoid embarrassing Mr Trump’s family, not to influence the electorate.
Mr Trump was a private citizen, campaigning for president, but neither elected nor sworn in, when Mr Cohen paid Ms Daniels in October 2016.
He was president when Mr Cohen was reimbursed, and Mr Cohen gave evidence that they discussed the repayment arrangement in the Oval Office.
Mr Trump has been fighting for months to overturn the verdict and could now seek to leverage his status as president-elect.
Although he was tried as a private citizen, his forthcoming return to the White House could propel a court to step in and avoid the unprecedented spectacle of sentencing a former and future president.
While urging Judge Merchan to throw out the conviction, Mr Trump also has been trying to move the case to federal court.
Before the election, a federal judge repeatedly said no to the move, but Mr Trump has appealed.
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