Judge delays Trump hush money sentencing in wake of Supreme Court immunity decision

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s sentencing for his hush money case has been pushed back to September following an indication Trump’s lawyers will ask to set aside the former president’s conviction in light of Monday’s stunning Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.

The sentencing, previously scheduled for July 11, will be delayed until at least September 18, Justice Juan Merchan wrote Tuesday — potentially pushing it to just weeks before the election in November.

Merchan is set to rule on Trump’s motion to set aside the verdict September 6. The sentencing, “if such is still necessary,” Merchan wrote, is expected to happen around two weeks later.

Lawyers for Trump indicated in a letter that Trump’s conviction should be tossed after the Supreme Court decision, they argued, confirmed arguments raised earlier in the case that prosecutors should have not been allowed to introduce certain pieces of evidence.

Tweets the former president posted while president, including posts where he spoke about how Michael Cohen would not “flip,” ethics filings and call records from when he was in office, and the testimony of former campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks all fall under “official asks,” lawyers Blanche and Bove wrote.

On the stand in May, Hope Hicks broke down in tears after telling the court potentially damaging information about a conversation between her former boss and Michael Cohen.

“Mr. Trump’s opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and that it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election,” she testified in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Under the new Supreme Court decision, these “official-acts evidence should never have been put before the jury,” the lawyers wrote in the letter, which was made public Tuesday.

In a letter on Tuesday, the Manhattan DA’s office said they would not oppose a delay in the sentencing, and ADA Joshua Steinglass asked for a deadline of July 24 to file a response to Trump’s lawyers motion.

“Although we believe defendant’s arguments to be without merit, we do not oppose his request for leave to file and his putative request to adjourn sentencing pending determination of his motion,” Steinglass wrote.

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