Former President Donald Trump said on Friday that the sentencing in his hush-money case is being moved to after the election because he “did nothing wrong.”
Judge Juan Merchan postponed the sentencing in the Manhattan case on Friday for the second time, pushing the date back from September 18 to November 26, exactly three weeks after the presidential election. In a Truth Social post, Trump argued that Merchan delayed the sentencing “because everyone realizes that there was NO CASE, I DID NOTHING WRONG!”
“It is a political attack against me by Comrade Kamala Harris and other Radical Left Opponents for purposes of Election Interference, and is a case that should have never been brought,” he wrote. “Nothing like this has ever happened in the United States of America – IT IS STRICTLY THIRD WORLD, BANANA REPUBLIC ‘STUFF.’”
Trump was convicted in late May on all 34 counts of falsifying business records brought against him after he was accused of covering up hush-money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels, which date back to the 2016 election campaign.
Merchan said that he was delaying the sentencing “to avoid any appearance — however unwarranted — that the proceeding has been affected by or seeks to affect the approaching presidential election in which the Defendant is a candidate.” Trump and his allies have alleged that the hush-money case brought against him by Manhattan Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a ploy to stop the Republican nominee from winning another term in the White House.
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Merchan shot back at those allegations with his order on Friday, arguing, “The Court is a fair, impartial, and apolitical institution,” adding that his decision “should dispel any suggestion that the Court will have issued any decision or imposed sentence either to give an advantage to, or to create a disadvantage for, any political party and or any candidate for any office.”
In his Truth Social post, Trump added that the American public and “every legal scholar” “understands” that the Manhattan case is “election interference.” He argued that the case should ultimately be “terminated.”
Legal experts have said that the Supreme Court could ultimately step in. Trump’s attempt to get the case moved to a federal court before the sentencing was shot down by U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein, writing that the federal court “does not have jurisdiction to hear Mr. Trump’s arguments concerning the propriety of the New York trial.”
