UPDATE (Jan. 6, 2025, 5:33 p.m. ET): Judge Juan Merchan denied Donald Trump’s attempt to halt his sentencing scheduled for Friday. Trump’s lawyers previously said they would seek an emergency appeal if Merchan ruled against him, so the sentencing should proceed on Friday unless blocked on appeal.
UPDATE (Jan. 6, 2025, 4:11 p.m. ET): The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office opposed Donald Trump’s attempt to delay Friday’s scheduled sentencing while he appeals Judge Juan Merchan’s rejection of his presidential immunity claims. “The Court should deny defendant’s motion for an immediate stay and should proceed to sentencing as scheduled on January 10, 2025,” DA Alvin Bragg’s office wrote Monday.
Donald Trump wants to block his Jan. 10 sentencing in the hush money case as he appeals Judge Juan Merchan’s rulings rejecting his attempts to overturn his New York state guilty verdicts for falsifying business records.
“Due to the fact that further criminal proceedings are automatically stayed by operation of federal constitutional law, the Court will lack authority to proceed with sentencing, must therefore immediately vacate the sentencing hearing scheduled for January 10, 2025, and suspend all proceedings in the case until the conclusion of President Trump’s appeal on Presidential immunity,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a filing dated Sunday and made public Monday.
On Friday, Merchan rejected Trump’s latest motion to dismiss and set sentencing for Jan. 10, noting that he didn’t intend to sentence Trump to incarceration.
The new defense filing is a notice that Trump is appealing recent rulings by Merchan that rejected Trump’s attempt to use presidential immunity to dismiss the case or overturn the guilty verdicts reached by a jury against him last year. Following those May verdicts on all 34 counts charged, the Supreme Court’s July immunity ruling in the federal election interference case led Trump to argue that its reasoning should lead to overturning the state verdicts and dismissing the case. Citing the immunity ruling in this latest filing, Trump’s lawyers wrote that initiating these appeals automatically pauses further proceedings. If they’re correct about that, then Trump will not likely be sentenced before he is inaugurated on Jan. 20. At any rate, the filing itself calls into question whether Trump will be sentenced Friday, but we will see what Merchan does and what further appellate steps Trump’s lawyers take if the judge seeks to move forward with the sentencing despite this latest filing. This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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