Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Monday he does not object to former President Donald Trump’s request to postpone his criminal sentencing, saying it is up to the judge to decide if he wants to stick with the Sept. 18 date.
Mr. Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, wants state Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan to delay the sentencing until after the November election. The former president says he will likely need to appeal a Sept. 16 ruling on whether the Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidential immunity for “official acts” impacts his conviction by a jury in May of felony business fraud.
In a letter, Mr. Bragg said Mr. Trump’s plan to appeal the looming immunity decision complicates matters. Securing the courthouse for Mr. Trump’s sentencing is a complex undertaking, and swift-moving decisions over an appeal of the Sept. 16 ruling on immunity could make it hard to gather everyone within two days.
“We defer to the court on whether an adjournment is warranted to allow for orderly appellate litigation of that question,” Mr. Bragg’s assistant district attorneys wrote. “The People are prepared to appear for sentencing on any future date the court sets.”
A Manhattan jury in May found Mr. Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records. He faces up to four years in prison but is unlikely to do hard time, given his status as a first-time offender and the sensitivity around sending a former president and current GOP nominee to the slammer.
At trial, prosecutors said Mr. Trump criminally concealed a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels around the 2016 campaign with an intent to violate election laws.
They said Mr. Trump paid Ms. Daniels through Michael Cohen and concealed reimbursements to the lawyer in 2017 by misidentifying checks.
At trial, the ex-president’s lawyers said he was busy running the country and thought he was paying Mr. Cohen for legal services, so his team logged the checks in that manner. They said the trial was politically motivated and designed to thwart Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers are making a last-ditch effort to invalidate the conviction because of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity. They say prosecutors incorporated tweets and testimony from Mr. Trump’s time at the White House that could be construed as official acts.
Prosecutors have said the evidence had little bearing on the trial and should not taint the overall case.
“The only question now before the court is whether a small subset of the trial evidence was improperly admitted in light of a brand-new evidentiary rule that derives from official-acts immunity, and if so, whether any error in admitting official-acts evidence was harmless,” Mr. Bragg’s team wrote, before criticizing Mr. Trump’s continued assertion that Judge Merchan has a personal bias. “None of defendant’s remaining arguments merit any consideration.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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