Trump's hush money sentencing delayed after Supreme Court immunity ruling | The Excerpt
On Wednesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Aysha Bagchi explains why Donald Trump's sentencing in his New York hush money case has been delayed in the wake of this week's Supreme Court immunity ruling. President Joe Biden will meet Wednesday with Democratic governors in the wake of his debate debacle. Rudy Giuliani loses his New York law license after a court found he lied about the 2020 election. Palm Beach Post Investigations Editor Holly Baltz examines Jeffrey Epstein's grand jury transcript, and how prosecutors blamed a teen victim. Panama's new president is vowing a migration crackdown with U.S. help.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Wednesday, July 3rd, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today Trump's hush-money sentencing has been delayed after the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity. Plus Biden will meet with democratic governors as the fallout from his debate struggles continues. And we discuss released Jeffrey Epstein grand jury documents.
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Former president Donald Trump's New York criminal hush-money sentencing has been delayed to September 18th after the Supreme Court's presidential immunity ruling earlier this week. I caught up with USA TODAY Justice Department correspondent Aysha Bagchi for the latest and a look at what this might mean for Trump's conviction. Hello, Aysha.
Aysha Bagchi:
Hi Taylor.
Taylor Wilson:
So Aysha, what do we know about this delay and really how did the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity this week lead up to this decision?
Aysha Bagchi:
Yes. This delay was really sudden. We were expecting to have Trump sentencing next week on Thursday, and then Monday we got the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity. Really, that ruling hasn't been applied to any cases yet, so we don't really know how judges are going to read the ruling and think about how it impacts Trump's criminal cases. But Trump's lawyers filed a letter with Judge Juan Merchan on Monday, asking for Merchan to let them file a formal motion in which they're going to argue that his criminal conviction in the New York case should be thrown out because evidence introduced in the trial, they say, runs a foul of the Supreme Court's ruling. And then Judge Merchan on Tuesday said, okay, I'm going to delay your sentencing for months. We're not going to have the sentencing until September 18th. And even that sentencing date is up in the air. He says he'll have the sentencing if it's necessary, but first he's going to hear Trump's argument. He's going to hear the prosecution's response, and he's going to make a ruling about whether the conviction can stand in light of the Supreme Court's decision.
Taylor Wilson:
And have prosecutors responded to these claims from Trump's lawyers, that evidence introduced at the trial really doesn't mesh with the Supreme Court's ruling on immunity?
Aysha Bagchi:
Prosecutors have not responded in terms of addressing the Supreme Court's ruling since the Supreme Court made its ruling. They did file a letter to Judge Merchan saying that they thought it was acceptable to delay the sentencing and hear this argument, but it won't be for some time that they will actually address what they think Supreme Court's ruling means for the case, at least in detail. They did say that they don't think Trump's argument has merit. Why they don't think it has merit is something that we're going to find out later when they submit a formal filing to the court.
Taylor Wilson:
And you know Aysha, we've been talking about the September date, but could this change anything about the sentencing itself beyond the change of date? I mean, really, what might this functionally mean for Trump's conviction?
Aysha Bagchi:
Yes. So the sentencing date is up in the air. Judge Merchan acknowledged that in his decision on Tuesday, that he still has to make a ruling about whether the conviction can stand. If the conviction doesn't stand, then there won't be any sentencing and prosecutors will have to decide whether they want to retry Donald Trump. If the conviction doesn't stand, that probably means that there's some evidence that the judge's ruling shouldn't have come into the trial and would need to be excluded from any future trial. An issue that might be raised is whether the conviction would've been different based on that evidence coming in or out, but the prosecutors are probably going to argue that there wasn't any evidence that came into the trial that runs afoul of the Supreme Court's ruling. So really we're going to see the ruling play out in real time about how it's going to impact an actual prosecution against a former president, especially a prosecution that didn't seem to target a whole lot of what Trump was doing in terms of being president while in office.
But Trump's lawyers are going to say that his tweets were introduced at the trial and one reason he was tweeting about his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, paying adult film stars, Stormy Daniels, money, is that the public's impression of him matters and his tweets are the bully pulpit of the President. They're also going to argue that conversations that Trump had in the Oval Office shouldn't have come into the case. They already mentioned in their letter to Judge Merchan on Monday, a conversation that former White House aide, Hope Hicks, testified to with Trump having to do with the Wall Street Journal story into the payment to Stormy Daniels. And they say that that conversation shouldn't have come in because they were having that conversation at the White House. So we're really going to have to see whether Judge Merchan thinks that this evidence shouldn't have come into the trial, in light of the Supreme Court's ruling, but you can definitely expect the lawyers to be wrangling over that topic. Nobody is going to just concede in all likelihood that the conviction is questionable and should be tossed out.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, fascinating stuff. Aysha Bagchi covers the Justice Department for USA TODAY. Thank you, Aysha.
Aysha Bagchi:
Thanks Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
Meanwhile, the Biden cam continues to operate in crisis mode. Democratic governors will meet with the President today nearly a week after his disastrous debate performance last Thursday. The meeting confirmed by the White House follows a call that a group of concerned Democratic governors held amongst themselves on Monday, amid fallout from Biden's headline grabbing debate. During the call, the governors discussed seeking a conversation directly with Biden. White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said Biden will also meet with congressional leaders this week and conduct an interview with ABC News, but she would not discuss what Biden will tell the governors later today. Several Democratic governors, including Michigan Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and California Governor, Gavin Newsom, are among those speculated as possible replacement candidates for Biden if he were to drop out of the presidential race. Biden has given no indication publicly that he intends to withdraw and Whitmer, Newsom and other democratic governors have rallied around Biden publicly and worked to disavow themselves from any recruitment efforts.
Biden yesterday blamed jet lag from his recent travels overseas for his disastrous debate performance, even though he returned to the US 12 days before taking the stage with former President Donald Trump. Still Democratic Congressman, Lloyd Doggett, from Texas yesterday became the first democratic lawmaker to break away from towing the party line, publicly calling for Biden to step aside and make way for a new generation of leaders to unite the country. As for Biden's Republican challenger, former President, Donald Trump, and his team have been uncharacteristically low-key. They're making it clear they don't expect Democrats to replace Biden as the nominee. But Trump said on Richmond's Morning News with John Reid, quote, "I'm going to show up and, you know, I'm going to campaign whether it's him or somebody else." Unquote. You can read more with the link in today's show notes.
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Rudy Giuliani lost his New York law license yesterday after a state appeals court found he had lied in arguing that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from his client, former President Donald Trump. The court found that Giuliani, New York City's former mayor who served as personal lawyer to Trump, baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of the country's electoral process, and that he, quote, "Actively contributed to the national strife that has followed the 2020 presidential election for which he is entirely unrepentant." Unquote. Giuliani was one of the leading proponents of false claims that widespread voter fraud contributed to Trump's loss in the 2020 election. He's now prohibited from practicing law in any form and appearing as an attorney or counselor at law before any public authority, among other things. Giuliani had previously been ordered by a judge to pay $148 million in damages for defaming two Georgia election workers. Though he had attempted to dismiss the judgment, he lost his bid in April, according to ABC News. Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Giuliani, said they would appeal and that members of the legal community should speak out against what Goodman called a politically and ideologically corrupted decision.
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After hearing about the sex abuse Jeffrey Epstein committed on a 14-year-old girl in his Palm Beach mansion, the prosecutors and jurors tasked with holding him accountable, seemed set on teaching his victim a lesson instead. Grand jury transcripts released Monday in a lawsuit by the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY network, contain unusual exchanges between prosecutors and a victim they called to testify. The information is public after a years long legal battle, following the post's lawsuit pushing for the release of the transcripts in 2019. I discussed that and more of the findings from the transcripts with Palm Beach Post investigations editor Holly Baltz. Holly, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.
Holly Baltz:
Happy to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
So Holly, I want to just start here. Why did you and the Palm Beach Post feel these documents were so important to file this initial lawsuit in 2019?
Holly Baltz:
In 2019, we did an investigation of the first ever criminal case against Jeffrey Epstein. It all began here in 2005 when the stepmother of a young girl reported to Palm Beach police that she thought her daughter had been molested by a wealthy guy. And we looked at this grand jury in 2006 because it came up with only one solicitation of prostitution charge against Jeffrey Epstein. And after reading the police reports, they found multiple victims of rape, molestation, all that sort of thing. We learned from sources that the state attorney, Barry Krischer, had torpedoed his own case. They said only one victim testified and they trotted out her MySpace pages to undermine her. So that's why we sued.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. Torpedo, interesting choice of a verb there for Palm Beach County State Attorney, Barry Krischer. What exactly did happen here in his own case against Epstein in 2006 and what happened with the grand jury proceeding?
Holly Baltz:
Well, with the grand jury proceeding, reading through the transcripts, honestly, it was worse than we thought. It turned out to be two victims, not one. The prosecutors called them both prostitutes, right in front of grand jurors, which set a tone that grand jurors when they were questioning them picked up on. So yeah, it was pretty bad. The case was definitely undermined. Again, it came out with only one charge, which was a felony. Afterward, federal prosecutors took up the case, then there was the famous deal, and in 2008, he pleaded guilty to two prostitution related felonies and sentenced to 18 months in jail, of which he spent 13.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. So Holly, you touched on this a bit, but really one of the more disturbing parts of these documents showed prosecutors and jurors using really this accusatory language against a teen victim. What else can you tell us about this?
Holly Baltz:
The prosecutors kept bringing up how their stories were different from what they told the police, but they were on things like, when did certain sex acts occur, whether it was before or after. And honestly, it didn't seem to matter. One of the prosecutors asked a girl, well, what kind of bra were you wearing? What kind of panties? It was just a tone that the grand jurors also picked up on.
Taylor Wilson:
Police had found roughly two dozen young women and girls who described sexual abuse at Epstein's Palm Beach mansion. Did we learn about them in these documents and what came out of those police findings?
Holly Baltz:
The thing that we learned is that there were so many, and we learned from the transcripts that the detective described them all. Apparently their names were redacted, which was curious because the criminal charge was only one count. Even if you're going to level a prostitution charge, it was only one, and of course, nothing to do with their ages. And the detective said everyone he was describing was underage.
Taylor Wilson:
And what more could we learn from these grand jury transcripts?
Holly Baltz:
We're still going through them and seeing what more there is. Honestly, with Jeffrey Epstein, there's always more.
Taylor Wilson:
Holly Baltz, Palm Beach Post investigations editor. Great insight and work on this. Thank you so much.
Holly Baltz:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Panama's new president took office Monday vowing to curb illegal immigration, and he's quickly signed an agreement with the US to crack down on migration through the Darién Gap jungle passage. In his first address as President, José Raúl Mulino, promised to seek international assistance to find solutions to what he described as a costly humanitarian and environmental crisis. Last year, a record more than half a million migrants passed through the Darién Gap, a dense jungle on the Panama-Columbia border. Mulino's government signed a memorandum of understanding with the US government to allow the closing off of the passing of illegal immigrants through the Darién, according to Panama's government. In the agreement, the US agreed to cover the costs of repatriating migrants who enter Panama illegally.
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A recent spate of shark attacks on both coasts have swimmers and surfers concerned, but are these Jaws esque fears warranted? To find out, I spoke with Stephen Kajiura, a professor of biological sciences at Florida Atlantic University, about how shark behavior might be changing. Tune in for the conversation later today, beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, right here on this feed.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump's sentencing delayed after SCOTUS immunity ruling | The Excerpt
