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Judge Juan Marchand did the right thing for the wrong reasons by postponing former President Donald Trump’s sentencing until after the 2024 election, as evidenced by his decision to set the trial date for November 26th. 4-page letter According to a statement to lawyers released today, Marchan will postpone ruling on President Trump’s immunity claim until November 12th.
In my view, Trump is correct in saying that moving forward with a ruling scheduled for September 18th would have been unlawful interference with the 2024 election. There was no rule of law reason that Trump, a major party nominee, should have been sentenced so late in the presidential campaign. And it is also notable that until today’s postponement, Judge Marchan appeared determined to sentence Trump just as early voting begins (September 16th) in the most crucial battleground state, Pennsylvania.
Judge Marchan postpones Trump’s sentencing until after the election
Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, even though business records violations are non-violent crimes that are typically misdemeanors in New York (and typically not prosecuted at all by Manhattan’s exemplary progressive prosecutor Alvin Bragg). While 34 is impressive, the number is high because Bragg unethically interpreted what should have been just a few charges by charging each document as a 4-year felony, which could add up to 136 years in prison!
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks to media after a jury found former President Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, Thursday, May 30, 2024, in New York. (AP/Seth Wenig)
This was intended to make Trump look like a hardened criminal, but the crimes at issue are relatively minor, given that Trump has no criminal history and it was clear that he would be released on bail pending appeal regardless of whatever sentence he was given. The appeal could take years to resolve, and there is a high (in my view) chance that the conviction will be overturned on appeal, unless it is overturned sooner (more on this later).
Therefore, there should not have been a rush to judgment before the election. In his letter, Melchan is careful to claim that he is “fair, impartial, and apolitical.” On the contrary, he is a partisan Democrat, As Hugh Hewitt pointed outdonated to Biden’s 2020 anti-Trump campaign in violation of judicial ethics laws, and his daughter is a progressive political activist who works for Kamala Harris and other staunchly anti-Trump Democrats. For a truly apolitical judge, ruling on September 18th would have been unthinkable. The only reasonable justification for insisting on it would be so that Harris could call Trump a “convicted felon facing prison time” ahead of Election Day.
That being said, Legal The basis for the postponement should not have been the imminence of an election, but the indisputable fact that Bragg’s recklessness and Marchant’s complacency created serious immunity problems in the case.
Despite Trump’s objections, and despite the Supreme Court’s serious consideration of presidential immunity, Judge Marchan allowed Bragg’s prosecutors to present evidence of Trump’s official presidential conduct, including testimony from two Trump administration officials that prosecutors called “devastating” in their closing statements to the jury.
One month after the trial, the defendant was acquitted.Trump vs. the United States), the Supreme Court not only ruled that a president cannot be prosecuted for acts of official conduct, but added that such acts may not be admitted as evidence in a criminal trial. Thus, the contested evidence should have been excluded.
United States Supreme Court: (front row, from left) Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Elena Kagan, (back row, from left) Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Moreover, immunity is one of the few issues in criminal law that a defendant may appeal immediately, especially for a former president who faces the possibility of criminalizing official conduct. This is because, unlike other miscarriages of justice, immunity concerns whether it was (or was) proper to hold a trial in the first place. Thus, the issue of immunity should be decided before an exonerated defendant can undergo further litigation.
that That’s why postponing it should have been an easy decision for Marchand, but it seems he hasn’t figured it out yet.
In his letter, Merchan contradicts himself by saying that if the original 11 July ruling date had been met, there would have been no need to postpone the ruling now. But that date was never going to be met. The Supreme Court’s exemption decision was handed down on 1 July. It was this exemption decision, not the 2024 elections, that made the postponement necessary.
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Marchant also points out that even Bragg didn’t oppose Trump’s motion for a delay (indeed, he interprets it as Bragg joining Trump’s motion), but the judge seemed indifferent to the fact that the district attorney took that position, because Trump would have a right to appeal if Marchant ruled against him on immunity. A delay was inevitable.
Finally, Marchand had previously stated that he would hand down the exoneration ruling on September 16. However, despite postponing the ruling to November 26, Marchand somehow decided to postpone the exoneration ruling until November 12. This doesn’t make sense.
If Judge Marchan rules against Trump on November 12th (and I expect he will, given the one-sided record in the case), Trump will likely appeal and insist that the decision not be made until the appeal has made its way through the New York Court of Appeals and possibly all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Of course, a decision cannot be made before November 26th.
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If Marchand is willing to rule on Trump’s immunity claim on September 16, as he has told the parties, then he should do so. Even on that schedule, there’s no way the appeals proceedings his ruling would trigger could be resolved in time for a November 26 ruling. And even Marchand acknowledges that if the Supreme Court interprets its immunity ruling as requiring the conviction to be vacated, there’s a chance the ruling won’t happen at all. (Don’t bet on it.)
In any case, postponing the September 26th ruling should have been a no-brainer. Marchan finally warmed to the idea, but in an awkward way. I don’t know if Trump will win the election, but I can’t imagine having to cancel my Thanksgiving plans because of the November 26th ruling.
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