MANHATTAN (CN) — A New York judge on Tuesday delayed his impending ruling on whether President-elect Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal conviction should stand after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling for broad presidential immunity.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan was set to issue the long-awaited ruling on Tuesday. But prosecutors and Trump’s defense attorneys jointly asked the judge for a stay of current deadlines — which includes the ruling on immunity — after Trump won the 2024 presidential election last week, according to an email chain with the court made public Tuesday.
“The people agree that these are unprecedented circumstances and the arguments raised by defense counsel in correspondence to the people on Friday require careful consideration to ensure that any further steps in this proceeding appropriately balance the competing interests of (1) a jury verdict of guilt following a trial that has the presumption of regularity; and (2) the Office of the President,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo wrote to Merchan.
Trump’s attorney Emil Bove joined prosecutors in their request for a stay, but he also argued that the charges should be dismissed entirely due to Trump’s status as president-elect.
“There are strong reasons for the requested stay, and eventual dismissal of the case in the interests of justice,” Bove wrote in an email to the judge. “The stay, and dismissal, are necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern.”
Trump’s election win has already blown up the federal cases against him; federal prosecutors at the Department of Justice are in talks to wind down their efforts to hold Trump accountable for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and supposed mishandling of federal documents at Mar-a-Lago.
As for this state case, the immunity issue has already won Trump two delays of his planned sentencing. He’s currently due to be sentenced on Nov. 26, barring further setbacks or the conviction being tossed altogether.
In May, a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, which were part of a broader scheme from Trump to nullify bad press related to his 2016 presidential campaign by paying hush money to a porn star he had sex with a decade earlier.
But when the Supreme Court issued its bombshell ruling in July, finding that former presidents have absolute immunity for official acts in office, Trump claimed that certain evidence from the trial should have been withheld from the jury and its verdict vacated.
“No president of the United States has ever been treated as unfairly and unlawfully as District Attorney Bragg has acted toward President Trump in connection with the biased investigation, extraordinarily delayed charging decision, and baseless prosecution that give rise to this motion,” Trump argued in a court filing from July 11.
Trump said that Manhattan prosecutors violated the High Court’s new precedent by presenting evidence at trial from his official acts as president. That evidence included Trump’s interactions with his then-communications director Hope Hicks, who testified about Trump’s efforts to downplay a 2018 Wall Street Journal article about his adulterous behavior and hide it from his wife, Melania.
Trump claimed that the presidential immunity ruling “specifically forbids prosecutors from offering ‘testimony’ from a president’s ‘advisers’ for the purpose of ‘probing a federal act.’”
Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office countered that the Supreme Court’s decision has “no bearing on this prosecution,” nor would it necessitate vacating the jury’s unanimous verdict. In a court filing from July 25, they argued that the trial evidence only scrutinizes Trump’s unofficial conduct, which is not protected under the immunity ruling.
“There is no basis for disturbing the jury’s verdict, and defendant’s motion should be denied,” they wrote.
Even if the evidence in question should have been withheld, prosecutors say they presented more than enough additional evidence to prove Trump’s guilt without it.
“If official-acts evidence was erroneously admitted at trial, the error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of defendant’s guilt,” they added.
The hush money trial ran from mid-April to late May. It was the first time a U.S. president, current or former, stood trial for criminal charges.