New York Justice Juan Merchan surprised many by promising to delay President Trump's sentencing after the preposterous verdict in the Stormy Daniels hush money trial until after the election, on Nov. 26. The all-Democrat jury had convicted him on 34 felony counts over a bookkeeping classification last May in charges that have never been tried in the way they were tried. Merchan said he needed to go over the implications of a recent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.

It's kind of dubious.

After all, there is zero doubt he want to ship Trump off to prison. He was the judge in other cases against Trump executives on kangaroo-court charges, and publicly burned with fury that he couldn't give them longer sentences than the law allowed. You can just imagine what he'd like to do to Trump. Many say he would never jail Trump but that's not his pattern.

So why did he blink when he finally had him where he wanted him?

Most likely, he recognized that the more he stuck it to Trump, the higher his poll ratings went -- propelling him to a lead, actually, when he hadn't had one earlier. That was the pattern during the trial, because the public doesn't like lawfare, particularly lawfare that affects its voting choices, and this was politicized lawfare with a capital 'L.' Witnesses were forbidden to appear. The president was gagged. The jury was all leftist Democrats. Pervy creepy irrelevant witnesses with nothing to add but salacious stories were allowed to unspool on the stand, such as the porn "star" Stormy Daniels, in an obvious bid to embarrass President Trump and drive his poll numbers down.

A lot of black voters, for one, could recognize what was going on based on their own experiences, and as a result, decided to vote for Trump, driving his poll numbers up.

Now that Kamala Harris is in the saddle on the Democrat side, her own record as a lawfare prosecutor throwing the book at young black men convicted of minor crimes would make that experience even starker for some black voters.

Perhaps Merchan saw some internals.

That's not as farfetched a concern as might be supposed, given that his adult daughter Loren works for a company, Authentic Campaigns, that does work for Democrats, and according to Victoria Taft's report on PJMedia, has actually taken money from the Harris campaign. In the House, Rep. Elise Stefanik, and Rep Jim Jordan, are trying to sort that out, so more information may be out on it for sure. It definitely looks like a politicized conflict of interest for the justice.

The big one, though, is the admission from the Department of Justice that the whole trial was a political operation from the start. That ran in a video by Stephen Crowder. It confirmed what everyone was thinking and now one of the culprits, albeit to an undercover reporter, said it out loud.

Merchan worked in close cahoots with Prosecutor Alvin Bragg, with no daylight in their positions -- if Alvin wants something, Merchan gives it, and if Alvin doesn't want something, the judge accommodates. Trump's defense lawyers couldn't say the same.

And Bragg was up to his ears with the White House, having "hired" the number three man at the Justice Department and assigned him a lowly prosecutorial job in New York, as if maybe he had another job -- reporting to the White House. Nobody in the swamp takes that kind of demotion without being on some kind of mission.

Now there's an ethics complaint from Congress, filed by Stefanik, following news that Loren Merchan's company got money from the Harris campaign.

Wasn't Trump impeached for supposedly lobbying the Ukrainians to continue to investigate the corruption of Joe Biden's son Hunter? Funny how those conflicts of interest only go one way.

But it seems to have given Merchan pause, because so long as he's not sticking it to Trump, he probably won't have to deal much with Congress, and even if he does, it won't be covered much in the press.

Any of these factors might be why Merchan chose to delay sentencing. If Democrats can rig the election against Trump again, which they are already trying to do, he will be home free to sentence Trump to as many years in prison as the law allows, and we know he will. He might even try it if Trump is elected. But it's going to be harder.

That's why Trump has to win the election.

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