(Photo by Yuki Iwamura-Pool/Getty Images)
This morning, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg signaled in a letter to Justice Juan Merchan that the state does not object to a delay in sentencing for Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the 2016 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.
The letter was in response to a demand from Trump to postpone the September 18 sentencing date until “after the election” in light of SCOTUS’s July 1 immunity ruling, which went so far as to bar evidence of official acts, even when the crime charged is not official. Justice Merchan has promised to rule by September 16 on Trump’s motion to vacate the verdict and dismiss the underlying indictment on grounds of presidential immunity, since the conviction and underlying indictment were both secured using testimony of former White House aides. Trump argues that a sentencing hearing on September 18 won’t allow him time to seek review and/or a stay from an appellate court.
Noting that getting the former president and his security detail into and out of the courthouse is a major undertaking, the prosecutors seemed to accede to a delay of the sentencing date so as to avoid forcing court staff to scramble to plan for a hearing which might be canceled at the last moment by an emergency stay.
“The Supreme Court’s recent decision did not consider whether a trial court’s ruling on that distinct evidentiary question is immediately appealable, and there are strong reasons why it should not be,” ADA Matthew Colangelo wrote. “Nonetheless, given the defense’s newly-stated position, we defer to the Court on whether an adjournment is warranted to allow for orderly appellate litigation of that question, or to reduce the risk of a disruptive stay from an appellate court pending consideration of that question.”
But much of the DA’s letter was taken up with the rhetorical equivalent of scratching your face with your middle finger.
To be fair, Trump’s lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, both alums of the Southern District of New York, started it last week with an unsubtle swipe at the state prosecutors:
As relevant here, after wrongly denying that Presidential immunity existed for months, DANY purported to authoritatively address the scope of Presidential power and the immunity doctrine, inaccurately, in a brief filed just 23 days after the Trump decision. They did so despite only limited federal litigation experience, with the notable and telling exception of a former high-ranking official from the Biden Administration, and without any input from the federal government that they felt worth mentioning.
The DA replied by noting that Trump’s fancypants lawyers had botched the state procedures when they suggested that “DANY should not be permitted to file a public sentencing submission that will include what the Supreme Court described as the ‘threat of punishment,’ in a manner that is personally and politically prejudicial to President Trump and his family, and harmful to the institution of the Presidency[.]”
Defendant’s concern about a “public sentencing submission” from the People is also misplaced. Any pre-sentence memorandum the People submit would be sealed. CPL § 390.50(1). The only way the memorandum would become public is if the Court orders otherwise or the defendant unlawfully discloses it.
They went on to observe that states are also responsible for adhering to federal law, and don’t need SDNY to ‘splain them how to apply the Supreme Court’s newly articulated immunity standard:
Finally, defendant’s apparent insinuation that state prosecutors are incapable of applying federal constitutional law is fundamentally flawed, given that the People and this Court protect and apply federal constitutional rights every day.
Gosh, it’s so weird how everyone thinks the SDNY guys are all assholes.
People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump [Docket via Law360]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
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