Having seemed to take a back seat to the American presidential campaign, the judicial record returned to the news on Friday, September 6. Four days before the televised debate with Kamala Harris, Donald Trump received some excellent news. In New York, Judge Juan Merchan had decided to postpone announcement of the sentence against the former president.

Originally scheduled for September 18, the sentence will not be handed down until November 26, several weeks after the election. When they go to the polls, American citizens will therefore not know whether Trump has been sentenced to prison, a suspended sentence or house arrest – only a few of the options available to the judge.

This long-awaited decision is the consequence of the jury's guilty verdict against Trump in his criminal trial for falsifying business records. He was accused of having organized a system of covert payments during his victorious 2015-2016 campaign, in order to prevent unflattering revelations about his extramarital affairs, notably with former porn star Stormy Daniels.

Originally, the sentence should have been handed down on July 11, shortly before the opening of the Republican convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But the Supreme Court's July 1 decision on on Trump's request for full presidential immunity – which partly met his expectations – called into question the scope of all cases being heard or tried. Trump is still indicted in three cases, two of them federal. Merchan therefore thought it wise to wait until all appeals had been exhausted, postponing revelation of the sentence to September 18. On July 14, the Republican candidate's lawyers called for a much more extensive postponement. Shortly afterwards, to general surprise, the office of New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg did not object to this move, during election season.

In his decision, Judge Merchan wrote on Friday that he wanted to avoid "any appearance –however unwarranted – that the proceeding has been affected by or seeks to affect the
approaching Presidential election" in which Trump is a candidate. Pointing out that such postponements are "routinely granted, often several times," the magistrate underlined "the unique facts and circumstances of this case," which should not prevent Trump from being treated in the same way as any other litigant.

Having scrupulously ensured that the New York trial was conducted with full respect for due process and adversarial debate, Judge Merchan has delivered a very cautious analysis here. It is also the complete inverse of that from Tanya Chutkan, another judge in Washington. On Thursday, the latter presided over a hearing in the federal investigation into the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, and the coup attempt that preceded it. "This court is not concerned with the electoral schedule," the judge noted in the face of a repetitive and unsuccessful onslaught by Trump's lawyers, attempting to obtain, here too, yet another delay.

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