Trump makes 12th request to delay hush-money case, asking that sentencing happen after the election

The motion argues sentencing should be delayed because the judge has a major decision due September 16.

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Thursday filed their 12th hush-money delay request, this time asking to push back his September 18 sentencing until after Election Day.

The two-page request came just days after the judge in the case rejected the defense team’s third request that he recuse himself from the case and criticized Trump for repeating failed legal efforts.

Thursday’s defense adjournment motion to Justice Juan Merchan of the New York Supreme Court — the Manhattan judge who has presided over the case since the GOP presidential candidate’s March 2023 indictment — again repeats previously failed arguments.

It says that sentencing should be delayed because the judge has a major decision scheduled for September 16 on whether the case should be tossed in its entirety because of Trump’s newly bestowed immunity from prosecutions based on official acts.

The motion also repeats an argument rejected by the judge Wednesday, when he declined to recuse himself (for a third time) because his daughter has worked as a political consultant for Democratic candidates, including years ago for the now-presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The motion makes specific mention of Loren Merchan’s work as a minority partner at the Chicago-based political consultancy Authentic, where she worked on the Harris presidential campaign in 2019.

The firm was founded by the Democratic activist Mike Nellis, who organized the July 30 “White Dudes for Harris” online fundraiser. Trump’s lawyers now say that this connection — the judge having a daughter who works for Nellis, who prominently campaigns and fundraises for Harris — is being ignored by the judge.

“Michael Nellis, a business partner of Your Honor’s daughter at Authentic Campaigns (and Authentic’s founder), posted on social media about, inter alia, making maximum donations to the Harris campaign and using his clout with that campaign to get Walz to ‘talk on our White Dudes for Harris call last week,'” the delay motion says, referring to Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.

Nellis declined to comment, saying a letter he filed this month to the House Judiciary Committee “speaks for itself.”

The letter, a copy of which Nellis tweeted on Tuesday, describes the limits of Loren Merchan’s work on behalf of Harris. It was sent in response to a demand for internal Authentic documents as part of an investigation into what the committee’s chair, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, has termed “politicized prosecutions.”

Thursday’s delay request also notes the sentencing date falls “after the commencement of early voting in the Presidential election.”

Adjourning the sentencing until after the election “is of paramount importance to the entire nation, including tens of millions of people who do not share the views of Authentic, its executives, and its clients,” the request says.

“There is no valid countervailing reason for the court to keep the current sentencing date on the calendar,” the motion, signed by Trump’s attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, says.

“There is no basis for continuing to rush. Accordingly, we respectfully request that any sentencing, if one is needed, be adjourned until after the Presidential election,” it adds.

Only two of the former president’s previous hush-money delay requests were approved by Merchan. The first was a three-week delay of the original March 25 trial start date due to the late production by federal prosecutors of 80,000 pages of evidence. The second was a more than two-month delay of the original July 11 sentencing date, granted after the US Supreme Court immunity opinion.