Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg agrees to pause Trump ‘hush money’ sentencing — but opposes tossing case entirely

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has agreed to delay President-elect Donald Trump’s sentencing on his conviction on charges related to hush money paid to a porn star — while a judge decides whether to toss the case entirely due to Trump’s election win.

The prosecutor’s decision, made public on Tuesday, makes it highly likely that Trump, 78, will re-enter the White House in January largely unscathed from the four criminal cases that at one time threatened to derail his candidacy.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan now needs to rule on whether to approve pausing Trump’s sentencing, which had been scheduled for Nov. 26.

Bragg’s office wrote that prosecutors “would not oppose” Trump’s bid to freeze the sentencing while the sides hash out his latest attempt to dismiss the case based on the claim that a sitting president “may not be prosecuted,” court papers show. 

The filing from Bragg’s office indicates that it is willing to put off Trump’s sentencing until at least December, making it unlikely, though not technically impossible, that Trump would be sentenced before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

But prosecutors refused to agree to Trump’s demand that they drop the case in light of him being elected president.

“The People deeply respect the Office of the President, are mindful of the demands and obligations of the presidency, and acknowledge that Defendant’s inauguration will raise unprecedented legal questions,” the filing reads. “We also deeply respect the fundamental role of the jury in our constitutional system.”

Trump’s sentencing date has already been pushed back twice since a jury convicted him in May of concealing a payoff that hid a sex scandal from voters before the 2016 presidential election.

Trump spent six weeks of his presidential campaign inside a Manhattan courtroom listening to salacious, often humiliating testimony from former porn star Stormy Daniels — who testified to having a brief sexual encounter with him in 2006 — and his former fixer Michael Cohen.  

The sentencing schedule issue could also be moot if Merchan decides to scrap the conviction entirely based on Trump’s separate effort to get it tossed based on July’s US Supreme Court ruling immunizing a president for “official acts” taken in office.

Trump’s attorneys had argued that the trial was irreparably “tainted” by evidence jurors heard from Trump’s first term in the White House.

Prosecutors say the high court’s ruling has “no basis” in the Manhattan case.

Merchan — who hasn’t said when he’ll issue a decision — could also decide to wait until a federal appeals court ruled on a separate effort by Trump to move the case out of court.

Trump has called the case a political “witch hunt” carried out by Democrats, claiming without evidence that the prosecution was orchestrated by President Biden, even though the Manhattan DA is a state official who does not answer to the White House.

A large percentage of Americans consistently told pollsters that the case’s outcome would not affect their vote.

Steven Cheung, Trump Communications Director, called Tuesday’s development “a total and definitive victory for President Trump and the American People who elected him in a landslide. 

“The lawless case is now stayed, and President Trump’s legal team is moving to get it dismissed once and for all,” Cheung said in a statement.