Former President Donald Trump’s latest effort to delay the upcoming sentencing in his criminal hush money case has hit a snag.
A day after Trump’s attorneys asked a federal court in New York to remove the case from state court, the court on Friday rejected their filing as “deficient,” a notice on the court’s docket said.
According to the notice, the filing was sent back in part because the attorneys failed to include written permission from either the court or prosecutors.
In a separate letter to Judge Juan Merchan, the New York judge overseeing the case, Trump’s lawyers flagged their attempt to move the case to federal court while continuing to urge Merchan to delay the sentencing, which is currently scheduled for Sept. 18.
“There is no good reason to sentence President Trump prior to November 5, 2024, if there is to be a sentencing at all, or to drive the post-trial proceedings forward on a needlessly accelerated timeline relative to the manner in which similar issues are being addressed by the Special Counsel’s Office and the Department of Justice,” defense attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote.
Trump was found guilty in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election. He has said he will appeal the decision.
Trump’s lawyers argued in Thursday’s filing that the former president’s new indictment in his federal election interference case helps their argument that the New York conviction should be thrown out on the basis of presidential immunity.
Special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday charged Trump in a superseding indictment in the Jan. 6 case that was adjusted to respect the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that Trump is entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken as president.
“Those prosecutors’ unsuccessful efforts to purge the taint of the Presidential immunity violations identified by the Supreme Court in [the] Trump [case], by obtaining a new charging instrument from a different grand jury, are consistent with President Trump’s position in this case that DANY’s use of official-acts evidence in grand jury proceedings requires dismissal,” Thursday’s filing said.
