New York Judge Juan Merchan last Friday postponed Donald Trump’s hush-money case sentencing until Nov. 26 to avoid any appearance of influencing the election between the former president and Vice President Kamala Harris. But the stay in Trump’s fate might in fact doom him later, according to former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller’s team.
“Sentencing Donald Trump after the election, if he loses, makes it much more likely that you can think about sending him to jail,” he told MSNBC host Jen Psaki. The moment he loses, Weissman said, Trump would be a mere “Citizen Trump” rather than a presidential candidate, a status that could expose him to the weight of impartial justice.
Trump had a different interpretation of Merchan’s ruling. After the delay was announced, the former president crowed on Truth Social that “the Manhattan D.A. Witch Hunt has been postponed because everyone realizes there was NO CASE, I DID NOTHING WRONG!”
Trump was convicted of 34 felony charges in May, and was due to hear his sentence in July until a Supreme Court decision in favor of broad presidential immunity prompted Merchan to delay it until September. Merchan then delayed it again last Friday due to the political “complexities” of sentencing a former president who is also, once again, his party’s nominee for that office. Merchan also delayed his ruling on Trump’s immunity, which prevents the former president from appealing to the Supreme Court before Election Day in the case that Merchan decides that he is not immune.
“That kept this whole case out of the Supreme Court before the election, at a time when the Supreme Court otherwise would have every incentive to issue just as political decision as it issued with respect to presidential immunity,” Weissmann said. “It would have had the same incentive to go and reach into this case and say, ‘No, there has to be a retrial.'”
Now, according to Weissmann, the Supreme Court might have also have “a lot less incentive to reach in” and intervene in the case should Trump lose the election and potentially a significant amount of political relevance.
“It just makes it more apolitical,” Weissmann said, referring to the sentencing that could slap Trump with up to four years of jail time or a more lenient penalty like community service or probation.
