President-elect Donald Trump on stage with former first lady Melania Trump during an election event at the Palm Beach Convention Center early on Nov. 6, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

A New York state judge officially postponed President-elect Donald Trump’s sentencing date Friday for the 34 felonies a jury convicted the former president of in May.

The order from Judge Juan Merchan indefinitely postponing a sentencing hearing that had been scheduled for next week was something of a formality after New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Tuesday he would not oppose Trump’s motion to suspend the criminal case during Trump’s upcoming term in the Oval Office.

Trump’s attorneys and prosecutors jointly asked for a delay on Nov. 12 as Bragg’s office determined how and if they would proceed following Trump’s election victory, which created an unprecedented situation for the court as Trump became the first convict to win a presidential election.

Legal experts have held for decades that a sitting president cannot face criminal prosecution.

In a statement Friday afternoon, Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung asserted the election result this month showed voters rejected the criminal charges against Trump.

“President Trump won a landslide victory as the American People have issued a mandate to return him to office and dispose of all remnants of the Witch Hunt cases,” Cheun wrote. “All of the sham lawfare attacks against President Trump are now destroyed and we are focused on Making America Great Again.”

Merchan also granted the Trump defense team’s request to file a motion to dismiss the charges altogether. He set a Dec. 2 deadline for Trump’s brief arguing to dismiss the case, with prosecutors’ response due a week later on Dec. 9. Bragg said Tuesday he would fight Trump’s attempt to dismiss the entire case.

A jury convicted Trump of falsifying business records by paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels to conceal an alleged tryst. Trump sought to keep disclosure of the affair, which he denies took place, from voters during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Each of the 34 convictions is punishable by up to four years in state prison.

The case was the only one of four prosecutions against Trump to reach the trial stage in the nearly four years since he left the White House.

U.S. Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith is winding down the two federal cases against the president-elect, consistent with longstanding department policy not to prosecute sitting presidents. Smith is reportedly planning to resign before Trump takes office.

President-elect Donald Trump, at the time the Republican candidate for president, appears in court during his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 20, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Steven Hirsch-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — All court proceedings for President-elect Donald Trump’s guilty conviction in New York are now paused, as the prosecution examines moving forward with the case against the man who will be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States.

New York Judge Juan Merchan stayed all actions Monday in the People of New York v. Donald J. Trump until Nov. 19, according to email correspondence between all parties that was published by the court.

U.S. special counsel Jack Smith has similarly requested a federal judge to delay proceedings in Trump’s 2020 election interference case.

Trump, who was found guilty by a jury in late May of 34 felonies in falsifying business, is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 26.

Merchan has yet to rule on Trump’s motion to dismiss the case based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s July presidential immunity ruling that triggered questions over what evidence against a former president can or cannot be admitted to a court of law.

Delay sought

Merchan granted the delay in response to a joint application from both the District Attorney of New York’s office and Trump’s defense team, which wants the case altogether dismissed.

New York prosecutor Matthew Colangelo informed Merchan in an email Sunday that Trump’s team requested on Friday the state delay the case “to provide time to review and consider a number of arguments based on the impact on this proceeding from the results of the Presidential election.”

Colangelo agreed the “unprecedented circumstances” presented by Trump’s election victory “require careful consideration to ensure that any further steps in this proceeding appropriately balance the competing interests of (1) a jury verdict of guilt following trial that has the presumption of regularity; and (2) the Office of the President.”

Colangelo asked Merchan to give him until Nov. 19 to decide how and whether the prosecution will move forward.

Later Sunday morning, Trump attorney Emil Bove followed with an email to Merchan agreeing with the prosecution’s deadline request.

“The stay, and dismissal, are necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern, which is the broader argument that we made to DANY on Friday,” Bove wrote.

34 felony charges

Trump made history as the first former president to become a convicted felon when the New York jury on May 30 found him guilty on all 34 felony charges for covering up hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

The trial that stretched throughout the spring featured witness testimony from Daniels about a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 at a Lake Tahoe golf resort.

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was also called by the prosecution to give an account of Trump’s concealment of 11 invoices, 11 checks and 12 ledger entries to repay Cohen for the $130,000 in hush money he paid to Daniels.

Trump slammed the trial and conviction as a “scam,” and Republicans showed resounding support for the former president during and after the proceedings, with House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, calling the verdict a “shameful day in American history.”

The Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, holds a campaign rally at Gastonia Municipal Airport on Nov. 2, 2024 in Gastonia, North Carolina.  Trump won the election on Nov. 5 and now federal prosecutors are winding down an election interference case against him related to the 2020 election. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Special counsel Jack Smith, the prosecutor in the federal criminal cases against President-elect Donald Trump, asked a D.C. federal judge on Friday to suspend deadlines in the election interference case that centered on Trump’s supporters’ Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

To allow the government time to mull the “unprecedented circumstance” of a former president under indictment returning to the White House after Tuesday’s election, Smith’s team, writing in an unopposed motion to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, called for upcoming deadlines in the case to be cleared.

Under U.S. Justice Department precedent that dates to the Watergate era, the department may not prosecute a sitting president. 

“As a result of the election held on November 5, 2024, the defendant is expected to be certified as President-elect on January 6, 2025, and inaugurated on January 20, 2025,” the prosecutors wrote.

“The Government respectfully requests that the Court vacate the remaining deadlines in this pretrial schedule to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the best appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.”

A 1973 Justice Department memo concluded that criminally prosecuting a sitting president would diminish the president’s capacity to perform the office’s functions. That conclusion was affirmed in a 2000 memo dealing with the question.

The four-sentence brief filed Friday said prosecutors would let the court know by Dec. 2 what route they planned to take.

Chutkan granted the motion shortly after Smith filed it.

Reversal of Trump’s fortunes

The legal development marks another milestone in Trump’s remarkable comeback.

The former president ended his first term, shortly after the Jan. 6 attack and amid a worldwide pandemic, with fewer than 39% of voters holding a favorable opinion of him and nearly 58% disapproving.

Over the next few years, the U.S. Justice Department and state prosecutors in New York and Georgia launched investigations into allegations that resulted in four felony indictments.

But in part thanks to his electoral victory in which he won or led in as of Friday afternoon every battleground state and could win the popular vote for this first time in his three White House runs, Trump appears likely to escape culpability in any of the cases.

Smith, whom Trump railed against and promised to fire — and possibly deport — appears ready to drop the election interference case.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee in South Florida, already dismissed charges related to Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents that prosecutors said he illegally took from the White House and brought to his Mar-a-Lago estate after his 2020 election loss. Prosecutors have appealed that decision.

The Georgia election interference case that charged Trump as part of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results in the state has sputtered amid revelations Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting the case, had an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate in her office.

A New York jury did find Trump guilty earlier this year of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payment promised to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.

But sentencing for that case was postponed following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling granting presidents the presumption of criminal immunity for any acts conducted in their official capacity.

The Nov. 26 sentencing could be further delayed as Trump prepares to return to the White House.