Judge Juan Merchan has postponed former President Donald Trump’s sentencing until after the upcoming election.
In May, Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records during a criminal trial in New York City.
Though the former president was originally scheduled to be sentenced on July 11 — one week before the Republican National Convention — the date had been rescheduled for Sept. 18.
In a Friday letter, Merchan pushed the date to Nov. 26 — three weeks after Election Day.
"The imposition of sentence will be adjourned to avoid any appearance — however unwarranted — that the proceeding has been affected by or seeks to affect the approaching Presidential election in which the Defendant is a candidate," he wrote in his order.
“The Court is a fair, impartial, and apolitical institution,” he continued. “Adjourning decision on the motion and sentencing … should dispel any suggestion that the Court will have issued any decision or imposed sentence either to give an advantage to, or to create a disadvantage for, any political party and/or any candidate for any office.”
“This is not a decision this Court makes lightly but it is the decision which in this Court’s view, best advances the interests of justice,” he concluded.
The postponement occurs on the same day Rep. Elisa Stefanik (R-N.Y.) filed an ethics complaint with the New York State Commission, claiming Merchan has violated the state’s Code of Conduct.
“New evidence on Kamala Harris’ most recent FEC filing shows she hired and paid Acting Justice Juan Merchan’s adult daughter’s company,” she wrote in an X post. “This is a clear violation of the New York State Judicial Code of Conduct which dictates that a judge must recuse from a case where a relative up to and including the sixth degree has a financial interest in the outcome of the case.”
In the letter, Stefanik writes:Authentic is a digital consulting and marketing firm that services Democrat candidates. Loren Merchan, Justice Merchan’s daughter, is its president. Vice President Harris changed web hosting companies from AWS to Authentic immediately after becoming the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee. As the FEC report’s filing did not occur until August 20, nearly a month after the Harris campaign and Authentic had begun doing business, no one in the public, including the Commission, could have known of the relationship. This is merely the beginning of a new contract with a new campaign, regardless of the amount reimbursed. Sure, there’s an immediate benefit, but this is a play at a potential larger benefit for Authentic and Merchan down the road.
The lawmaker cited concerns over how pre-election media coverage of Trump’s sentencing could impact the election — a concern rendered moot by Merchan’s Friday announcement.
Even so, Stefanik says the state’s Code of Conduct “dictates that a judge must recuse from a case where a relationship up to and including the sixth degree has a financial interest in the outcome of the case.”
“Ms. Merchan is related to Justice Merchan in the first degree,” she wrote.
Though Trump asked for Merchan’s recusal during the case, the judge refused.
On Thursday, America First Legal filed a lawsuit against the Ethics Commission for the New York State Unified Court System and Merchan for declining to release the judge’s financial disclosure forms from 2018 through 2024.
“The law is clear that judicial financial disclosures must be released to the public,” Dan Epstein, America First Legal Vice President, said in a statement. “New York’s highest court has stated that such disclosures are necessary for parties before the courts to get a fair shake.”
He added, “The public needs to know what Judge Merchan is hiding or even if he failed to file financial disclosures at all. This is especially important given the fact that Merchan appears to have engaged in unlawful campaign contributions and is on the precipice of criminally sentencing the former President of the United States.”
