1 week Ago
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann on Sunday warned Donald Trump that he might want to hold off on celebrating a legal move last week that at first glance might seem to favor the former president. A judge on Friday postponed Trump’s sentencing in the Stormy Daniels hush money case from later this month until Nov. 26 to avoid any appearance of seeking to influence the election.
Weissmann said that one shift could change things. “Sentencing Donald Trump after the election, if he loses, makes it much more likely that you can think about sending him to jail,” he told MSNBC ’s Jen Psaki . At that point, he said, the former president would simply be “citizen Trump” and “not a candidate.
” He said moving it until after the election could also give the Supreme Court “a lot less incentive to reach in” and intervene in the case if Trump loses. “It just makes it more apolitical,” Weissmann said. Trump was convicted in May on 34 felony charges related to falsifying business documents to cover up an affair with Daniels, which he denies.
He was initially set to be sentenced in July, but that was postponed in light of a highly controversial Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. But on Friday, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan postponed it again, until three weeks after the election, due to the “ complexities ” of sentencing a former president who is also a candidate. While Trump faces up to four years in jail, the judge could instead sentence him to probation or community service , among other options.
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