Following his landslide election victory, newly elected President Trump will still be sentenced in his criminal trial in Manhattan later this month, with President Judge Juan Merchan the first to decide whether the charges should be dismissed entirely following the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year on presidential immunity.

Trump was found guilty of 34 charges of falsifying company records following his criminal trial in Manhattan in May. District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office tried to prove that Trump falsified company records to conceal a $130,000 payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election to cover her claims about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006 suppress. Trump has maintained his innocence in the case. case.

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on November 26, which is already a four-month delay 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 significant immunity from prosecution for official actions while in office, but not for unofficial actions. Merchan is expected to decide on the charges on November 12.

“A normal judge would dismiss this case, and then the prosecutor would have to decide what, if anything, is left so that we can consider retrying the case. But Judge Merchan has shown that he is nothing more than an ordinary judge. And so the catch-22 here is: if he were normal, he’d deny it, but because he’s not normal, he’ll probably deny it. But because it is an immunity claim, that gives the Trump defense team the right, the legal right, to immediately appeal denial,” Cully Stimson, deputy director of Heritage’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told me. Foundation, to Fox News Digital.

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

Stimson said that even if Merchan denies Trump’s claim of immunity, the Trump team appeals the decision and an appeals court also denies Trump’s claim, the president-elect will not face incarceration.

“For all intents and purposes, whatever happens if (Merchan) denies it, and the appeals court… follow the judge, and then the judge can convict him. Even then, the Justice Department will come in and say, “Look, under the Supremacy Clause, you can’t impose a criminal conviction, much less incarceration, on a sitting president.” And so that case will be on ice until after Trump resigns, but in practice this case and the Fanni Willis case are over,” he said.

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

Trump pleaded not guilty in the case and denied any such affair with Daniels. The now president-elect had dismissed the trial as a “sham,” calling Merchan “corrupt” and “adversarial,” appearing to allude to the judge’s family ties to the Democratic Party. Trump also denounced the case as “lawyer” promoted by the Biden-Harris administration to harm his chances of success in the 2024 presidential election.

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

Stimson went on to say that given the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity, it would be impossible to take the case with a scalpel and position the evidence related to Trump’s first administration in the White House and “official acts.” remove from the evidence related to his life before. he was chairman.

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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 have absolute immunity for their official actions, and therefore he’s going to have to do that . “recognize that the question is whether he has the temperament and judgment – which he has proven not to have, at least so far – to apply it in a fair and impartial manner and dismiss the charges,” he said. Stimson to Fox News Digital.

“Dismissing the charges puts the ball back in Alvin Bragg’s court. If Alvin Bragg wants to double down on his stupidity, which he has often done, he can reopen the case. But that won’t get him anywhere. , because that time the president will have taken office and the Department of Justice will act under the Supremacy Clause that you cannot bring your case, your criminal case, against a sitting president while he is the 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 felony counts of falsifying company records on May 30 in New York. (AP/Seth Wenig)

Fox contributor and former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Andrew McCarthy also wrote in an op-ed for Fox Digital this week that Trump would not face jail time in the case.

“Understand that Trump is not going to jail even if Merchan hands down a prison sentence. Although the charges are felonies, they are not serious enough under New York law to warrant immediate detention; Trump will be granted 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 delay sentencing and allow Trump to pursue his immunity appeal. That would avoid the impropriety of subjecting the next President of the United States to criminal conviction and sentencing when he is about to take power,” he continued.

“The rule of law has been terrible for the country. The resounding victory that the Americans gave to Trump should be the death knell,” McCarthy added later in his piece.