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SCOTUS’s plan to ratfuck all the Trump prosecutions at once is already coming to fruition, as his sentencing in the New York trial is postponed until September.
Within hours of the Court’s conservatives legalizing bribery, Trump’s lawyers fired off a letter to Justice Juan Merchan seeking leave to file a motion to overturn the verdict under New York CPL S 330.30(1). The DA responded with its own letter describing the defendant’s arguments as “without merit,” but seeking leave to file a reply brief by the 24th, and postpone the sentencing scheduled for July 11.
Those motions have all now been granted. In an email to to the parties yesterday, Justice Merchan wrote that “The Court’s decision will be tendered off-calendar on September 6, 2024 and the matter is adjourned to September 18, 2024, at 10:00 AM for the imposition of sentence, if such is still necessary, or other proceedings.”
Trump will now get to make a motion arguing that his convictions must be invalidated because it violates presidential immunity to use his public tweets and financial disclosures against him. Those are official acts, doncha know!
Also the judge allowed Hope Hicks to testify that “I think 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.” And the Supreme Court says that testimony by a president’s advisors is “presumptively immune,” and White House communications denying an affair with a porn star a decade before the election are official acts. So, presidents are not above the law, perish the very thought. It’s just that there’s no circumstance in which the law could ever apply to them. Which is totally different in ways you could understand if you were a dues-paying member of the Federalist Society and also a complete nihilist.
Elections have consequences. It just so happens that the election of 2016 may mean that the election of 2024 is our last.
NY v. Trump [Docket via Law360]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
