Trump Demands Delay Of Sentencing Because It Would Remind Us All That He's A Criminal

Laws, schmaws.

Donald Trump’s lawyers aren’t subtle.

It’s not enough for Todd Blanche and Emil Bove that the Supreme Court saved their client’s bacon in the election interference case by declaring that it’s very cool, very legal for presidents to do crimes. They’re not even satisfied that Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the stolen documents case on the theory that special counsels are UNLEGAL, taking her cue from Justice Thomas, who penned a concurrence in the immunity case answering a question no one asked. Trump is now trying to use the immunity ruling to get out of all four of his criminal indictments, including his 34 felony convictions in New York for creating false business records to cover up the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election campaign.

He howls that it would be “naked election-interference” for Justice Juan Merchan to sentence him before November 5, making no effort to hide that he’s asking for a delay based solely on the political calendar, and not because of any provision of New York or federal law.

How We Got To This Idiotic Juncture

On May 30, a jury convicted the former president of 34 counts of falsifying business records. On July 1, the Supreme Court ruled that a president is not only immune for official acts, but that official acts cannot be used as evidence against him in a criminal case. Trump then turned around and demanded that his New York conviction be overturned, because prosecutors introduced testimony from two White House aides, along with Trump’s official financial disclosure and various tweets made during his presidency.

“No President of the United States has ever been treated as unfairly and unlawfully as District Attorney Bragg has acted towards President Trump in connection with the biased investigation, extraordinarily delayed charging decision, and baseless prosecution that give rise to this motion,” Blanche bloviated, adding that Justice Merchan was “duty bound” to vacate the jury verdict and void the underlying indictment because “the use of official-acts evidence was a structural error under the federal Constitution that tainted DANY’s grand jury proceedings as well as the trial.”

The District Attorney (DANY) responded that the evidence against Trump was voluminous, and so inclusion of any official acts evidence amounted to no more than harmless error. And furthermore, Trump implicitly waived the immunity defense by failing to raise it in timely fashion. (He also waived it explicitly in 2023, when he unsuccessfully sought to remove the case to federal court.)

In April Justice Merchan rebuffed an “untimely” motion to bar the disputed “official acts” evidence, which was filed on the eve of trial, long after the deadline had passed.

“Defendant had myriad opportunities to raise the claim of presidential immunity well before March 7, 2024,” he wrote, testily.

In a letter to the parties on August 5, the judge promised to rule on Trump’s immunity motion by September 16. But his specific wording cannot have inspired confidence in the defendant.

Please note, the court appearance scheduled for September 18, 2024, at 10 A.M. remains unchanged. We will proceed on that date and time to the imposition of sentence or other proceedings as appropriate. Please keep these dates in mind if you still wish to file a pre-sentence recommendation.

Then last week, Trump’s lawyers docketed yet another demand for the court to postpone Trump’s sentencing. And while most Trump legal filings are performatively indignant and light on legal reasoning, Blanche and Bove seem to have shed whatever professional restraint they ever had — possible in light of SCOTUS’s unmistakable signal that it will sign Trump’s “Get Out of Jail Free” card, no matter how flimsy the justification.