Juan Merchan, the Biden-donor judge who oversaw the show trial conviction of former President Donald Trump in the Manhattan lawfare case agreed to delay proceedings until after the left-wing Manhattan district attorney’s office decides how to proceed now that Trump is president-elect.
Matthew Colangelo, who was formerly the No. 3 in President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice but was then hired to help “jump-start” the lawfare trial against Trump, said in a letter to Judge Juan Merchan on Sunday that his team needed more time to determine how to proceed after Trump’s electoral landslide.
“The People agree that these are unprecedented circumstances and that the arguments raised by defense counsel in correspondence to the People on Friday 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. Accordingly, the People respectfully request that the Court adjourn the upcoming scheduled dates to afford the People time to assess these recent developments, and set November 19, 2024 as a deadline for the People to advise the Court regarding our view of appropriate steps going forward,” Colangelo’s letter said.
Trump’s lawyers submitted a similar request that the case be dismissed, with attorney Emil Bove arguing in an email to Merchan, according to court filings, that a “stay, and dismissal, are necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern.”
Merchan gave prosecutors until Nov. 19 to make a decision. Sentencing is currently scheduled for Nov. 26.
Trump was convicted in May by a New York jury on 34 charges related to a crime that, as my colleague Tristan Justice put it, “nobody can quite articulate.” The case was brought by left-wing District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who campaigned on nailing Trump once in office after the Department of Justice and Federal Elections Commission declined to pursue the case.
Trump allegedly made payments to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, who then allegedly paid pornographer Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about an alleged affair. But Bragg alleges that the payments should have been classified as campaign expenses rather than a legal fee since the purchase of negative press (which is legal) was done to influence the 2016 election. But Cohen admitted on the stand that when the allegations of the affair surfaced in a 2011 blog post Trump was concerned about the story hurting his family.
Biden’s Department of Justice is also poised to drop its lawfare cases against Trump following the now president-elect’s victory. But as special assistant U.S. Attorney Don Brown wrote for The Federalist, Democrats’ aren’t “waving the white flag … as a premature gesture of goodwill.” Instead, it’s simply a “coverup” for the alleged illegal lengths the left has taken to try and jail their political opponent.
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