Trump sues Judge Merchan to stop hush money sentencing as he tosses last-ditch request to delay
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The president-elect will be sentenced January 10 after a jury’s unanimous conviction for falsifying records. The Manhattan judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush money trial has rejected the president-elect’s last-ditch attempt to delay a sentencing set for January 10.
A separate filing from Manhattan prosecutors blamed the former president for his ongoing attempts to delay proceedings and postpone his sentencing, which was initially set for July — two months after a jury unanimously convicted him on 34 counts of falsifying business records.
“He should not now be heard to complain of harm from delays he caused,” prosecutors wrote on Monday. “Forcing a President to continue to defend a criminal case — potentially through trial or, even more dramatically here, through sentencing and judgment — while the appellate courts are still grappling with his claim of immunity would, in fact, force that President ‘to answer for his conduct in court’ before his claim of immunity is finally adjudicated,” according to a filing from Trump’s defense attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove.
Trump asked to move his sentencing date to January 27 — a week after his inauguration. His attorneys claim that the “absolutel immunity” of a sitting president from “any criminal process” extends “into the brief but crucial period of transition when President Trump is the President-Elect.” Prosecuting Trump within that window runs afoul of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision on immunity, according to Trump’s attorneys.
