Two of the most high-profile criminal defendants in the country were expected to have blockbuster court appearances that could have had massive political ramifications in the final months of the 2024 election — but neither will experience them anymore.
This week marked a turning point in the legal sagas of former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
Judge Juan Merchan made the decision Friday to postpone Trump’s hush money sentencing hearing in Manhattan, which was originally scheduled for Sept. 18, until three weeks after the election.
One day prior, Judge Tanya Chutkan set new deadlines in Trump’s Jan. 6 case, which had been dormant for months while an appeal was pending before the Supreme Court. Chutkan’s long-awaited schedule implied that no hearings would take place until after the election.
Meanwhile, the same day Chutkan issued her order, Hunter Biden appeared in court to begin jury selection in his tax trial. But the first son stunned the federal courtroom by announcing that he would plead guilty to all nine charges he was facing and accept whatever sentence the judge decided to impose on him.
The younger Biden’s decision to plead guilty allowed him to avoid what was set to be a salacious weekslong trial. It would have given public exposure to the darkest periods of his life, when he was chasing controversial multimillion-dollar business deals abroad, addicted to crack cocaine, and neglecting his taxes.
When Joe Biden was running for reelection, his son’s trial threatened to present a serious predicament for his presidential campaign. However, since the president dropped his reelection bid in July, Hunter Biden’s tribulations have lost some of their political luster.
Trump’s four criminal cases, on the other hand, were at one point poised to be the dominating feature of 2024. Trials were expected to happen in all four cases, tying Trump up in court for weeks at a time while he was supposed to be campaigning.
That expectation ultimately crumbled. Trump’s classified documents case in Florida was tossed out and is now facing an appeal from special counsel Jack Smith. The former president’s election interference case in Georgia is also sitting before an appellate court and will not see any action for months. In any case, legal experts have speculated that the Georgia case could have a bleak future in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark presidential immunity ruling. That ruling also directly and immediately affected Trump’s Jan. 6 case, which Chutkan acknowledged in a hearing this week had no trial in sight while so many new open questions still needed to be resolved.
Trump’s conviction in New York on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, a charge that carries a maximum four-year prison sentence, was the only positive moment for Trump’s critics, who were hoping to see the former president face consequences of alleged wrongdoing.
However, Trump will now not see a penalty imposed on him for his conviction in that case before voters go to the polls as he successfully wields the Supreme Court’s ruling in that case as well.
Merchan’s order came in response to Trump repeatedly requesting that the sentencing be delayed. Trump argued in part that the Supreme Court’s ruling required attention in the case before any sentence should be handed down, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had not opposed the request. When Merchan granted it, the judge also openly admitted that the looming election contributed to his decision to make the change.
“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,” Merchan wrote in his order.
Trump celebrated the decision, saying on Truth Social it happened “because everyone realizes that there was NO CASE, I DID NOTHING WRONG!”
Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project and a Trump supporter, said a Trump prison sentence would have solidified the former president’s election victory and that Merchan’s move appeared to be part of a “tactical retreat” by judges and prosecutors in Trump’s cases.
“The Democrats know that if they put Trump in prison before the election, they are going to turn him into Nelson Mandela, and he’s going to win in a landslide,” Davis told the Washington Examiner.
Many in left-leaning circles criticized the decision, blaming Republicans for it and lamenting what they perceived as a lack of accountability for Trump.
“Today’s sentencing postponement takeaway: MAGA bullying works. sigh,” New York lawyer Karen Agnifilo, who worked in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, wrote on X.
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The Defend Democracy Project blamed conservative Supreme Court justices, calling two of them “compromised” because of questions from Democrats surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife’s political activism and Justice Samuel Alito’s flag controversy.
“Now he won’t face sentencing until after the election because the three justices he appointed to the Supreme Court, along with two justices compromised by their wives’ support for the insurrection, invented a pretext of presidential immunity,” the group said in a statement.
