Judge Juan Merchan said in an order in New York, the joint application for a stay of sentencing is granted to the extent that the November 26, 2024 dateTrump’s legal team cited a landmark July ruling from the Supreme Court that gives presidents sweeping immunity for official acts committed while in office as justification for their request.

Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in May after a jury found he had fraudulently manipulated business records to cover up an alleged sexual encounter with a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.

Prosecutors argued that concealing the alleged tryst was intended to help him win his first run for the White House.

Ahead of the election in November, Trump’s lawyers moved to have the case thrown out in light of the Supreme Court decision, a move which prosecutors firmly rejected.

Read Also: Judge To Rule On Throwing Out Trump Hush Money Conviction

On Friday, Merchan granted Trump leave to seek to have the conviction thrown out, likely meaning several further hearings that could be delayed once Trump is sworn in.

New York state prosecutors previously acknowledged in correspondence with the court the unprecedented circumstances, and called for the competing interests of the jury’s verdict and Trump’s election to be balanced.

The Republican president-elect has repeatedly derided the hush money case as a witch hunt.

Alongside the hush money case, Trump faces two active federal cases: one related to his effort to overturn the 2020 election and the other connected to classified documents he allegedly mishandled after leaving office.

In the election interference case, Special Counsel Jack Smith has moved to vacate deadlines, delaying it indefinitely — but not yet dropping it outright, in line with long-standing Justice Department policy not to prosecute sitting US presidents.

A Trump-appointed federal judge already threw out the documents case, but Smith had sought to appeal that decision.

As president, Trump would be able to intervene to end those cases.

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White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary and Deputy Assistant to the president, Andrew Bates, described the New York Times report as false.

Posting on X, Bates  was reacting to a report by the New York Times that Biden informed his allies that he is considering quitting the presidential race.

The newspaper reported that the president’s conversation is the first indication that he is seriously considering whether he can recover after a devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta.

The newspaper quoted Biden’s ally as saying that the president understood that he faced an uphill battle to convince voters, donors and the political class that his debate performance was an anomaly.

It added that President Biden had told a key ally that he knew he might not be able to salvage his candidacy if he could not convince the public in the coming days that he is up for the job after a disastrous debate performance last week.

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