New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan will wait another week to decide whether to do away with Donald Trump’s criminal conviction, after defense lawyers cited concerns that this case would throw the nation into a constitutional crisis.
“The stay, and dismissal, are necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern,” Trump’s attorney Emil Bove wrote to the judge on Sunday morning.
While the Manhattan district attorney’s office has aggressively pursued this case for years and fought back against delays time and time again, prosecutors are now signaling that they are open to hitting the pause button. Merchan is still scheduled to sentence Trump for falsifying business records in late November.
“The people agree that these are unprecedented circumstances and that the arguments raised by defense counsel … require careful consideration,” Assistant District Attorney Matt Colangelo wrote in an email to the judge.
Prosecutors say that now is the time “to ensure that any further steps in this proceeding appropriately balance the competing interests of (1) a jury verdict of guilt following trial that has the presumption of regularity; and (2) the office of the president.”
The back-and-forth correspondence addresses what legal scholars for years have anticipated as an epic clash between the nation’s justice system and its political realities: A former president — convicted by a bipartisan 12-person jury of 34 felony charges — has been elected once more to the highest office in the land.
Former prosecutors stressed the need to have this case resolved long before the 2024 election to avoid the appearance of partisan lawfare, but delays have now placed its conclusion in the complicated window between November’s Election Day and Inauguration Day in January.
The ability to hold a president accountable for their actions has only become more complex since Trump left office, with the U.S. Supreme Court granting a new and broader definition of immunity for the executive office of the president, making his official acts beyond the reach of criminal investigators.
Trump’s lawyers used that Supreme Court decision to try to overturn the New York jury’s unanimous decision to convict him of faking business records to cover up his sexual affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. His legal team argued that some of the evidence presented in court should never have made it there — particularly firsthand accounts that described the way Trump would sign checks from the Oval Office to reimburse his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, for delivering the hush money payments that kept the scandal under wraps before the 2016 election.
That legal request temporarily halted the case until after the election. Tuesday was supposed to be the day that Merchan, who oversaw the criminal trial in the spring, finally decided whether or not to dismiss the case and proceed with sentencing later this month.
On Sunday afternoon, Merchan agreed to push back his decision another seven days. He’s now set to issue his order on Nov. 19.
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Jose Pagliery is a reporter at NOTUS.