The Biden donor judge overseeing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal prosecution and a New York jury’s coached conviction of former President Donald Trump this week delayed Trump’s sentencing hearing until after the 2024 election.
Judge Juan Merchan, the acting justice of the New York State Supreme Court, announced Friday that he will postpone his decision on how long Trump should be jailed until November 26, exactly three weeks after Election Day 2024. Trump faces up to 136 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of 34 counts of bookkeeping fraud.
Bragg initially indicted Trump on claims that he violated the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) when his former attorney Michael Cohen paid pornographic actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair.
Nondisclosure deals like Trump’s are perfectly legal and don’t meet the threshold for criminal charges beyond a misdemeanor. Bragg, who campaigned on vengeance against the Republican, however, ignored the FEC and Department of Justice’s decision not to charge Trump over the payment and pursued a felony prosecution.
Several notably anti-Trump legal experts and media mouthpieces warned that Bragg’s case was weak and reeked of partisanship. Merchan only furthered those suspicions by entertaining Bragg’s demands to gag Trump.
Merchan originally planned to sentence Trump less than one week before the Republican National Convention in July. He then moved the hearing to September 18. Merchan’s latest ruling makes clear that the new and impending date is also moot.
Merchan, whose “rabid pro-Democrat bias” plagued how he presided over the Trump case, claims he indulged Trump lawyers’ requests
