Donald Trump’s criminal sentencing due to take place next week in New York has been cancelled.
His attorneys are pushing to dismiss the prosecution following his election victory earlier this month.
Judge Juan Merchan, who oversees the trial proceedings, announced the indefinite adjournment in a letter on Friday.
Trump originally was going to appear in court for sentencing on November 26.
Donald Trump criminal sentencing CANCELLED by New York court after hush money trialREUTERSIn his one-page decision, Merchan said that Trump’s lawyers had to file their argument for dismissal by end of business on December 2. Trump’s team wanted to have until December 20 to file their paperwork.
Prosecutors have one week to respond, and Merchan has paused all proceedings until he hears briefs from both parties.
A new sentencing date has not been set and the judge made no additional comments about the delay.
Earlier this week, the president-elect’s lawyers asked Merchan to throw out the case, stating that the dismissal was crucial “in order to facilitate the orderly transition of executive power”.
They said that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s team “appears to not yet be ready to dismiss this politically motivated and fatally flawed case, which is what is mandated by the law and will happen as justice takes its course”.
Trump’s team maintained that the US Justice Department was on close to dismissing the president-elect’s federal cases, pointing o a departmental memo that prohibits prosecution of current presidents.
“As in those cases, dismissal is necessary here,” their filing said. “Just as a sitting president is completely immune from any criminal process, so too is President Trump as president-elect.”
They’ve also argued he can’t be sentenced after his term in office because that’s too long to wait.
In the first-ever criminal trial of a former or current US president, Trump was convicted on May 30 of falsifying business records to cover up his then-lawyer’s $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump denies the encounter and has vowed to appeal the verdict once he is sentenced.
More to follow…