Donald Trump’s lawyers didn’t just try to delay his scheduled criminal sentencing. They also hinted at how the president-elect is fully embracing a definition of presidential immunity that puts him squarely above the law — one that legal scholars argue is a misreading of the Supreme Court’s opinion.
Following a New York judge’s surprise decision on Friday to proceed this week with sentencing Trump for 34 felonies of faking business documents in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, Trump’s lawyers Sunday called to delay the sentencing hearing and objected to Justice Juan Merchan’s rulings rejecting their previous attempts to toss Trump’s conviction. (Merchan denied Trump’s attempt to put off the sentencing date.)
But a close reading of the filing shows that Trump was trying to delay his upcoming sentencing by claiming that presidents and presidents-elect have immunity that cannot be checked by the nation’s courts, going beyond the Supreme Court’s already broad opinion on the matter, legal experts told NOTUS.