Judge in Trump's hush money case delays date for ruling on presidential immunity 

The Manhattan judge presiding over Donald Trump’s hush money trial announced Tuesday that he will decide two days before the scheduled sentencing date whether or not the former president should be protected by presidential immunity.

Additionally, Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, in a letter to lawyers on both sides, said that he would decide next week whether or not he will remain on the case following the defense lawyers’ third attempt to get him removed.

At the end of May, a Manhattan jury convicted the former president on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg first brought the charges against Trump in March 2023, arguing that he tried to cover up reimbursements to his former fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen who had paid former adult film star Stormy Daniels not to go to the press about an alleged one-night stand that she had with the former president.

Bragg charged the crime as a felony, arguing that the money was an unreported campaign expenditure because Trump had laid out the money to keep the information from the voting public.

The former president denied he had a sexual affair with Daniels and charged that the Biden administration pushed the local prosecutor to bring the case to undermine his reelection bid.

A volley of motions from defense lawyers after the conviction sought to remove the gag order in the case, set aside the verdict and have the judge tossed from the case due to a conflict of interest.

Defense lawyer Todd Blanche argued in court papers that Trump’s case should be dismissed and the verdict should be set aside following a July ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which determined that presidents enjoy protection from prosecution while performing their official duties in the White House. Additionally, some acts that are not official, but connected to the presidency are also protected from prosecution, the court ruled.

Although the payoff to Cohen and Daniels does not fall under the high court’s ruling, Blanche argued that testimony presented at trial should have been suppressed from the jury because it dealt with matters decided in the Oval Office.

The former president signed many of the reimbursement checks in the White House, and communications staffers handled phone calls and media strategies when the scandal erupted shortly after Trump took office.

Prosecutors have argued that the newly identified presidential protection does not apply to Trump.

"The criminal charges here ... exclusively stem from defendant's "unofficial acts" — conduct for which 'there is no immunity,' " Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo wrote in mid-July.

Merchan had previously informed the parties that he would make a ruling on how the Supreme Court decision applies to the case on Sept. 6 and scheduled the sentencing on Sept. 18, "if such is still necessary," he wrote in a letter.

On Tuesday, he pushed back the date of the decision to Sept. 16.

Last week, Blanche put forward his third attempt to have Merchan taken off the case, arguing that a conflict of interest has arisen out of the political consulting work the judge’s daughter received from Kamala Harris, now the Democratic candidate for the 2024 presidential election and Trump’s chief political rival.

On Tuesday, Harris announced that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will be her running mate for the White House.

Loren Merchan co-owns Authentic Campaigns, a Chicago-based political consulting firm that worked on the vice president’s 2020 campaign and organized a fundraising group called "White Dudes for Harris."

Colangelo, in a response motion, called the recusal effort "overheated, hyperbolic rhetoric."

Merchan wrote in his letter that he would decide on the recusal motion next week.