The New York judge overseeing Donald Trump's hush-money proceedings pushed back the former president's sentencing to Sept. 18, Courthouse News Service reports. After Trump's conviction on charges of falsifying business records, Justice Juan Merchan set a sentencing date of July 11. When defense attorneys asked the court to toss Trump's guilty verdict after this week's Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, Merchan agreed to delay the proceedings. He settled on mid-September for Trump's new sentencing, "if such is still necessary."
Prosecutors said they wouldn't oppose delaying Trump’s sentencing to allow him to make the argument that presidential immunity shields him from prosecution in the state criminal case. Trump’s attorneys told Merchan that evidence of Trump’s official acts as president should have never been put before the Manhattan jury under the high court’s new ruling. The Supreme Court’s decision was a lifeline for Trump in his ever-growing list of legal woes. Applying it to this state criminal case is a longshot, said retired New York judge George Grasso, who said it’s unlikely Trump’s guilty verdict will be affected by the high court’s ruling because most of the trial was focused on Trump’s behavior prior to being the president. “The crux of the Manhattan trial is stuff that Trump did when he was campaigning for president, not when he was president,” Grasso said. “It’s hard for me to wrap my head around how that would link to the new Supreme Court decision on the scope of absolute immunity. I just don’t see that really intersecting with that case in a meaningful way.”
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