After his massive election victory, President-elect Trump He is still expected to be sentenced in his criminal case in Manhattan later this month, with Presiding Judge Juan Merchan ruling for the first time on whether to dismiss the charges following President Donald Trump’s presidential immunity ruling. the Supreme Court earlier this year.

Trump was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records following his Manhattan Criminal Trial in May. District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office worked to prove that Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to silence his allegations of an alleged affair with Trump in 2006. Trump has maintained his innocence in the case.

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on November 26, already four months late from the original date of July 11.

Trump’s lawyers had asked Merchan to overturn the former president’s guilty verdict in New York v. Trump after the Supreme Court ruled in July that former presidents have substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts performed in the line of duty, but not for unofficial acts. Merchan expected to govern by November 12 as to where the accusations lie.

“A normal judge would dismiss this case and then the prosecutor would have to decide what, if anything, remains so we can consider taking the case back. But Judge Merchan has shown himself to be just a regular judge. And so the catch here is if he was normal he would rule it out, but because he’s not normal he would probably deny it. But because it’s a claim for immunity, that gives the. Trump’s defense team right, to immediately appeal his denial,” Cully Stimson, deputy director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital.

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Former President Trump takes the stage to address supporters during his rally at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Wednesday. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

Stimson said that even if Merchan rejected Trump’s immunity request, Team Trump appealed the decision, and an appeals court also rejected Trump’s immunity request, the president-elect would not risk incarceration.

“For all intents and purposes, whatever happens if (Merchan) denies it, and the appeals court…follows the judge, and then the judge can convict him. Even then, the Department of Justice will come in and will say: ‘Listen, under the supremacy clauseyou cannot impose criminal punishment, including incarceration, on a sitting president. This matter will therefore remain on ice until Trump leaves office. But from a practical point of view, this case and that of Fanni Willis are over,” he said.

Judge Juan Merchan poses for a photo in his chambers in New York on March 14. (AP Photo)

Trump has pleaded not guilty in the case and has denied any such relationship with Daniels. The now president-elect denounced the trial as a “sham”, while qualifying “Corrupt” and “conflicted” Merchan, appearing to reference the judge’s family ties to the Democratic Party. Trump also lambasted the case, calling it a “legal war” promoted by the Biden-Harris administration to harm its chances of success in the 2024 presidential election.

Trump cannot pardon himself at his inauguration because it was a matter of state.

Former President Trump appears in court with members of his legal team for an arraignment on charges stemming from his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury in New York on April 4, 2023. (Reuters/Andrew Kelly/Pool)

Stimson added that, given the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity, it would be impossible to take the scalpel to the case and suppress evidence related to Trump’s first administration in the White House and the “acts officials” in this position evidence related to his previous life. he was president.

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“(Merchan) is not your traditional judge, but he’s not going to say there’s no immunity for Trump because… the highest court in the land has said that presidents enjoy absolute immunity for their official acts, and so he’s going to have to recognize that the question is whether he has the temperament and judgment – which he has proven not to have, at least until now. present – ​​to apply this fairly and impartially and reject the charges,” Stimson told Fox News Digital.

“By dismissing the charges, it just puts the ball back in Alvin Bragg’s court. If Alvin Bragg wants to double down on stupid things, which he has done a lot, he can (reopen the case). But he doesn’t ‘will achieve nothing with this’, because by then the president will have taken office. And the Department of Justice will act under the Supremacy Clause that says you cannot bring a criminal case against a sitting president while he is president,” he continued.

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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks to the media after a jury found former President Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records May 30 in New York. (AP/Seth Wenig)

Andrew McCarthy, a Fox contributor and former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, also wrote in an op-ed for Fox Digital this week that Trump would not face prison time in the case.

“Understand that Trump will not go to prison even if Merchan imposes a term of incarceration. Although the charges are crimes, they are not serious enough under New York law to merit immediate detention; Trump will get released on bail pending his appeal,” he wrote.

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“Given that Trump will not be sent to Rikers Island by a Manhattan judge anyway, it would be prudent to defer sentencing and allow Trump to pursue his immunity appeal. This would avoid the impropriety of submitting the next president of the United States to a criminal conviction while he is about to take office,” he continued.

“The legislation has been terrible for the country. The resounding victory that Americans gave Trump should be a death knell,” McCarthy added later in his article.