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Manhattan Prosecutors Agree to Delay Trump’s Sentencing

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/nyregion/trump-sentencing-hush-money-trial.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4E0.EFjk.3LrZf6VhwwFF

Donald J. Trump’s lawyers want to argue that a Supreme Court decision giving presidents immunity for official acts should void his felony conviction for covering up hush money paid to a porn star.

Manhattan Prosecutors Agree to Delay Trump’s Sentencing

Alternate news organization: https://apnews.com/article/trump-hush-money-sentencing-bragg-4d5f8ce399656abff72d7c114a04060d

40 comments

kescusay

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He committed those acts before he was president, and he paid out of his personal accounts. I seriously doubt he's going to be able to wriggle out of this. Of course, his strategy is delay, delay, delay, so this is still, frustratingly, a win for him.

EmptySlime

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My understanding reading this is that they're worried that some of their evidence might have just become privileged and inadmissible via the whole "can't use testimony or communications between the president and his staff" part of the ruling.

I doubt that the SCOTUS ruling actually saves him here. It seems to me at least that the prosecution is agreeing to postpone sentencing mostly to go back and make sure that they aren't likely to lose too much of their evidence on appeal.

Zaktor

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It effectively guarantees an appeal though. "Evidence shown to the jury was inadmissible" isn't something a few months of delay changes, so it feels like they should just do the sentencing and start the process. Even if the judge rules that those weren't official acts, that ruling will be appealed and the good liberal judges in New York will feel obligated to play the Supreme Court's game regardless of how made up their BS is. Which again puts consequences beyond the election.

chetradley

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Lots of people in this thread are asking why this would pertain to the case since it was only official acts that were covered in the Supreme Court ruling.

Although the Manhattan case does not center on Mr. Trump’s presidency or official acts — but rather personal activity during his campaign — his lawyers argued on Monday that prosecutors had built their case partly on evidence from his time in the White House. And under the Supreme Court’s new ruling, prosecutors not only cannot charge a president for any official acts, but also cannot cite evidence involving official acts to bolster other accusations.

AtHeartEngineer

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So corruption is legal now

chetradley

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Effectively yes. The SCOTUS has been hard at work over the past few months dismantling government checks and balances. They've ruled that politicians can throw out rulings from experts, take bribes without consequence, and attempt to overthrow the results of an election.

Krono

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Corruption has been legal since 2010 when the Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United vs. FEC

Maeve

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Only for the wealthy and those peripherally connected.

oxjox

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Is it typical for a lawyer to, partly, build a case using things that happened after the person did what they were accused of doing?

Assuming this is fine and normal, this would mean they would need to first get judicial review to determine if the incidents they're citing are 'core' (Article II) official acts or not. Peripheral official acts, assuming a judge demes them to be, would certainly be admissible.

chetradley

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Yes, post-offence conduct is commonly used as circumstantial evidence in trial. Regarding the hush money case, I think a big goal for Trump's team is to delay the sentencing until after the election.

ramble81

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Fuck me… I knew it. I knew it was too good to be true. I was just waiting to see how it would be scuttled and here it is. This was my final shred of hope for justice in this world. I am now official one of the permanently jaded.

big_slap

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nah, don't give up so easily..

ramble81

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Easily? Man it’s hard to constantly be batted around for literally 8 years now… all of the shit Trump did while in office, and now all the shit he’s getting away with, not to mention his legacy of a court he left behind. At what point is there hope left to look for? Every time it looks like there could be some justice, SCOTUS or another court just rips it away and lets him keep at it.

Yeah I’ll vote, but where does it end?

big_slap

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it'll never end, friend.

Icalasari

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Hopefully when Trump goes to a McDonald's and gets a poisoned burger

grue

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WTF do you mean, "easily?" Do you have any fucking clue whatsoever how many times Trump should have had consequences applied to him already!?!!!!?!???!?!?

big_slap

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yes I do

theluckyone

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Rather apparent that you don't.

big_slap

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I do, but just because I'm not complaining loudly about it doesnt mean I've lost focus or faith

Rapidcreek

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Well, as usual he's getting away with everything and in the meanwhile the media is just focused on Biden.

Sanctus

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They sure dont Oswald them like they used to.

JesusSon

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Unfortunately, the people who do the Oswalding are the people running him.

officermike

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I don't fully understand. The Supreme Court has granted immunity for official acts performed as President. Aren't the charges for this case for actions from before his presidency, and therefore not subject to immunity?

Atom

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His team claims that the evidence used was gathered during the presidency, when he was immune. It sounds absurd, since concealing private business records is clearly not an official function of the presidency, but its was apparently enough to sway the prosecution who admittedly may know more about the legal system than I do.

Nightwingdragon

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His team claims that the evidence used was gathered during the presidency, when he was immune.

If I read the ruling correctly, this is where the problem is. If I interpreted the ruling correctly, any evidence gathered during his presidency is considered privileged and therefore can't be used against Trump. Since at least some of the crime was committed (him signing the checks) and some of the evidence was gathered while he was in office, this ruling makes that evidence inadmissable, and therefore the verdict invalid.

oxjox

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It doesn't make it inadmissible. They have filed a claim that it's inadmissible. Now it needs to be reviewed.

These are clearly not official presidential actions. It won't hold up but it's going to be delayed forever.

Nightwingdragon

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And that review will be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, where they just got finished saying that acts taken in office can't even be used as evidence against him in unrelated cases. By that logic, it's pretty open-and-shut. Trump received documents and signed checks while he was president and taking care of official business. The fact that he signed those checks in office makes him signing them inadmissible evidence, and without that evidence a lot of the case falls apart. His convictions will likely be thrown out.

oxjox

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acts taken in office can’t even be used as evidence against him

They didn't say that. They said core acts are immune. These are defined in Article II. Perimeter acts, which will need judicial review to be determined, can be used as evidence.

theluckyone

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Back in the late 80's, my dad was a trucker, hauling asphalt. Pulled into the depot on a Friday night expecting to go home (he was already over hours and cooking the log book). Dispatcher told him to take another load out. Dad pointed at the five fresh drivers playing poker around a table, told the dispatcher to send one of them.

Monday morning, they fired him, and told him why, straight to his face and the voice recorder sitting in his pocket.

According to OSHA and Dad's lawyer, it was an open and shut case. While the case was pending, the company blackballed Dad from the trucking industry. Being in St. Lawrence County of Upstate NY, he wasn't able to find a job elsewhere either. They buried us in paperwork, delayed the court case, and starved us out. Two years later, Dad settled. After the lawyer, he got a measely $12k.

Trump and the judiciary are going to do the same damn thing to this country. Doesn't matter whether he's guilty. They're gonna delay and stall and bury us in paperwork until we starve and settle for table scraps.

Zaktor

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Only if the prosecutors can successfully prove they weren't official acts, which will be non-trivial since so many things (like talking to advisors) are themselves official acts. It's really unclear how functionally pierceable that outer layer of presumed immunity is. The burden to bypass it is placed with the prosecutors, and any decision can be appealed back to the Supreme Court that wrote a whole nonsense provision to protect him even in this state trial.

oxjox

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I fully agree with you. This is now our reality. That doesn’t mean these hot takes barely based off of the first paragraph of the syllabus or one sentence of a dissenting opinion are more true.

MegaUltraChicken

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And this is exactly where you would most likely find evidence of "unofficial actions". The president is not personally going out and doing these actions themselves, they're using their administration. All those communications are now inadmissible. They tried to make it seem like they weren't fully siding with Trump, but they absolutely are.

IHeartBadCode

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Some (specific points to be later determined at some random point in time) evidence is being indicated as being protected (ie, some of the evidence comes from official acts). Thus, it taints the whole thing and ergo everything should be tossed out.

Mobiuthuselah

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Have they tried holding down the handle until it's done flushing?

ChihuahuaOfDoom

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He made those payments before he was president, how would the Supreme Court ruling change this case in any way?

EmptySlime

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The payment by Cohen to Daniels for her story happened before the election. The problem is that a bulk of, if not potentially all of the fraudulent payments to Cohen from Trump to reimburse him didn't happen until he was president. I don't remember exactly when the repayment started.

The worry I guess is that while the crime itself doesn't involve official acts, some of the evidence of the crimes used in the trial might have just become privileged communication that can't be used as evidence. I don't think anything has changed personally reading it, but I'm no lawyer. So they might have agreed to postpone the sentencing as a bit of caution to review everything to make sure that too much of their evidence didn't just become inadmissable. Basically, it seems mostly like a bid to make sure they don't get torched on appeal.

Furbag

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If they toss out this guilty verdict, I'm going to burn it all down. No justice, no peace.

ripcord

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No you won't.

autotldr

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

Manhattan prosecutors on Tuesday agreed with Donald J. Trump’s request to postpone his criminal sentencing so that the judge overseeing the case could weigh whether a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling might imperil his conviction, new court filings show.

Mr. Trump, who was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to his cover-up of a sex scandal during his 2016 presidential campaign, was scheduled to be sentenced on July 11.

On Monday, the Supreme Court granted Mr. Trump broad immunity from prosecution for official actions taken as president, dealing a major setback to his federal criminal case in Washington, where he is accused of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss.

In a letter to the judge who presided over the trial, Juan M. Merchan, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that the conviction should be set aside.

“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,” wrote Joshua Steinglass, one of the assistant district attorneys who tried the case against the former president.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers proposed filing their court papers on July 10, and the district attorney’s office said it would respond two weeks later.

The original article contains 381 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 45%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

crank0271

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I have a dumb question. Is there any way that this is actually a good thing? I assume that if one is sentenced to prison, they may be ordered to report to prison pending appeal. Then based on the outcome of that [those] appeal[s], they may have to continue being imprisoned or may be released from prison. So if one is sent to prison, there's a certain chance that they will be out three to six months later, but a lesser chance that they will be out a week later, as I imagine there is a delay for the appeal to be heard.

Am I just clutching at straws of optimism / I have no idea how any of this works?