Trump sentencing in Stormy Daniels hush money case indefinitely delayed by NYC Judge Juan Merchan

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan on Friday indefinitely adjourned President-elect Donald Trump’s punishment for covering up a hush money payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels after his first election victory.
In a brief order, the judge confirmed Trump’s sentencing would not go ahead next Tuesday and set a new schedule to consider arguments about how to proceed in light of his election win.
Merchan ordered Trump’s lawyers to file their new motion to dismiss the case by Dec. 2. He said the Manhattan district attorney’s office must respond by Dec. 9.
The sentencing had not been expected to go forward next week after prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers jointly requested a delay of all deadlines in the case following Trump’s victory in the Nov. 5 presidential election. Friday’s ruling formally called off the proceeding.
The judge also indefinitely delayed his ruling on Trump’s months-old motion to get the case dismissed based on the Supreme Court’s July decision on presidential immunity. Trump has argued it should have barred prosecutors from showing evidence concerning his time in office.
Trump’s legal team this week previewed their new motion to get the case tossed, arguing that the decision made by voters on Election Day mattered more than that of the jury who found him guilty of felonies this year.
“Just as a sitting president is completely immune from any criminal process, so too is President Trump as president-elect,” Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, who Trump has tapped for top positions in the Department of Justice, wrote.
In separate filings to the judge this week, prosecutors said they planned to fight Trump’s renewed efforts to get the guilty verdicts against him thrown out but conceded Merchan may need to consider pushing back sentencing until Trump is out of office in 2029.
“The People deeply respect the office of the president, are mindful of the demands and obligations of the presidency, and acknowledge that defendant’s inauguration will raise unprecedented legal questions,” prosecutors wrote.
“We also deeply respect the fundamental role of the jury in our constitutional system.”
The Manhattan DA’s office declined to comment Friday. Trump spokesman Steven Cheung, in a statement, called Merchan’s order “a decisive win for President Trump.”
Trump, 78, was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsification of business records on May 30, stemming from his reimbursement to his ex-fixer Michael Cohen for paying off Daniels in the leadup to the 2016 election, making him the first U.S. president to be found guilty of breaking the law. Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels bought her silence about an alleged sordid sexual encounter with Trump at a 2006 golf tournament when she was 27 and he was 60.
Jurors found the payment to Daniels was part of a scheme carried out before the election that sought to hide unflattering information about his past from voters that also included hush money payoffs to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who alleges she had a nearly yearlong affair with Trump, and a doorman at Trump Tower who claimed Trump had fathered a child with a housekeeper out of wedlock.
The criminal case was the only one of four brought against Trump after his first term that made it before a jury.
The DOJ is moving to wind down the federal cases accusing him of conspiring to subvert the results of the last presidential election that he lost to President Joe Biden and illegally holding on to sensitive classified documents after leaving office.
The Fulton County, Ga. case, in which Trump was accused alongside 18 others of trying to undermine the results of the 2020 election in that state — including by asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes he needed to claim victory — has been bogged down by appeals.