BREAKING: President Trump's sentencing postponed by Judge Merchan until Sept 18 in NYC

The sentencing date for President Donald Trump has been moved to September 18. The order came from Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the felony fraudulent business records case against Trump, brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. The original sentencing date was July 11, which was only days before the Republican National Convention, at which Trump is expected to be officially nominated as that party's presidential candidate.

The sentencing was moved following a ruling from the Supreme Court that stated that former presidents have immunity for their official acts. Trump's legal team then brought a motion to postpone the sentencing. The memo from Merchan's office reads: "The July 11, 2024, sentencing date is therefore vacated. The Court's decision will be rendered off-calendar on September 6, 2024 and the matter is adjourned to September 18, 2024, at 10:00 AM for the imposition of sentence, if such is still necessary, or other proceedings."




Filed on July 2, 2024

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of Trump's motion for immunity in the case brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith, who was selected to prosecute Trump over J6 and classified documents. In the course of that case, Trump's attorneys brought a motion claiming that he was immune from prosecution because he was performing his duties as president during the alleged commission of the crimes for which he was charged.

The Court took up the case, putting a pause on the case, and released their opinion as the last ruling of their term, on Monday, July 1. They ruled that a former president does have immunity when he is performing his official acts, though not when performing unofficial acts, and bounced the case back to the lower court presumably to determine if those acts for which Trump has been charged fall into the category of official acts. The Court did say, however, that communcations with his staff, such as DOJ personnel, do constitute official acts, meaning that he cannot be charged for anything that was said between himself and his advisors.

Immediately following the ruling, Trump sought to have his conviction in New York thrown out. Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsification of business records for having classified as legal fees in bookkeeping records the payments made to his then-attorney Michael Cohen. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg alleged that the payments were not for legal fees, but were reimbursements for payments made to Stormy Daniels, a woman with whom Trump is alleged to have had a dalliance. For Bragg, this first infraction, which would be classified as a misdemeanor in New York, was actually a felony because, as he said, it was in service to a greater crime. That greater crime, per Bragg, was election interference in the state's general presidential election of 2016.

After the immunity ruling, Trump's team was able to argue that if the alleged crimes were in fact committed as part of Trump's work on the election, then those acts were official acts per the Court's guidance, and therefore not eligible for prosecution. 

There were concerns that, should Trump undergo sentencing on July 11, he could have been hauled off to prison and prevented from accepting his party's nomination in person. With the moving of the date to September, Trump will now be able to attend the Milwaukee convention, accept that nomination, speak to his delegates, and campaign into September unencumbered by lawfare.

The case against him in Georgia has been put on hold as Fulton County DA Fani Willis faces potentially being removed from the case over her romantic involvement with a prosecutor who she hired to work on the case. The J6 case in DC, under Judge Tanya Chutkan, is on hold as the court will have to now take immunity into consideration. And the Department of Justice's case against Trump in Florida, overseen by Judge Eileen Cannon, is stuck in the mud as well due to evidence showing that the FBI tampered with evidence after conducting a raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago home and seizing classified documents that the Biden administration alleged Trump should not have in his possession, despite the Presidential Records Act.