The Dictatorship

Why the road to Trump’s sentencing could be a wild ride

Published

2 years ago

January 7, 2025

Why the road to Trump’s sentencing could be a wild ride

UPDATE (Jan. 7, 2025, 1:44 p.m. ET): A New York appellate judge on Tuesday denied Donald Trump’s motion to delay his sentencing in his hush money case, which is scheduled for Friday.

In the wake of Judge Juan Merchan’s decision last week to preserve the New York hush money indictment and jury verdict against President-elect Donald Trump, my phone blew up with breathless questions like, “Will you be at the sentencing?” and “Do you think he’ll show?”

Not so fast, I told my family and friends. Merchan’s opinion, as well as Trump’s choice in appellate maneuvers, suggest to me — a former litigator and close observer of Trump’s hush money trial — that a Jan. 10 sentencing is no sure thing.

Merchan wrote like he’s running out of time

First, it’s not at all clear to me that Merchan actually expects to hold a sentencing hearing on Jan. 10 or at any other time. What makes me say this? His own opinion.

Indeed, given that Merchan wrote that his inclination is “to not impose any sentence of incarceration” and instead, to consider “a sentence of unconditional discharge,” which is legal speak for no penalty at all, as “the most viable solution,” you might be asking why Merchan would even schedule a sentencing. And there are likely a few reasons, including that a sentence is necessary in virtually all circumstances both to preserve a jury verdict and to enable a defendant to exercise his appellate rights.

On Friday on “Alex Wagner Tonight,” I posed a third possibility: that Merchan, knowing that even the Manhattan district attorney’s team no longer sees jail time as “practicable” given Trump’s countdown to becoming the 47th president, at least wanted to ensure that Trump, like any other convicted defendant, would have to stand before a court of law and listen to its strong, humbling description of his conduct.

But that’s when BLN legal analyst Kristy Greenberg, a former Manhattan-based federal prosecutor of many years, observed that sections of the opinion themselves sound like what judges say at sentencing proceedings. For example, rejecting Trump’s argument that the crimes for which he was convicted are comparably not so grave, Merchan castigated Trump for the “premeditated and continuous deception” that underlie his conviction on 34 counts of falsification of business records with the intent to defraud, including “an intent to commit or conceal a conspiracy to promote a presidential election by unlawful means.”

Throughout the opinion, Merchan also bemoans Trump’s lack of remorse, noting his “unrelenting and unsubstantiated attacks against the integrity and legitimacy of this process, individual prosecutors, witnesses and the Rule of Law” and observing that Trump has, on multiple occasions, “pursu[ed] a claim with increasing indignation while simultaneously failing to acknowledge that this Court’s rulings on those subjects have been repeatedly upheld.”

Do those words read as if Merchan understood, when calibrating his opinion, that because of Trump’s expected appellate efforts, this could be his last public statement in Trump’s case? They sure do.

What’s surprising about Trump’s appellate strategy

Speaking of Trump’s anticipated appeals, on Sunday he asked Merchan to stay all remaining proceedings — e.g., the sentencing hearing — in light of his intent to appeal on Merchan’s recent holdings. But the notice of stay filing underscores that while Trump himself is often predictable, his lawyers are not.

Many legal observers — present company included — thought Trump would turn immediately to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit (aka the federal appeals court for New York) for relief. After all, he already has a related appeal pending in that court.

But after waiting all weekend for a federal filing, we learned instead that Trump’s team has two state court rabbits up their sleeve: a direct appeal of Merchan’s post-verdict decisions to retain the verdict and indictment, and what’s known as an Article 78 proceeding, a New York-specific process through which government actors can be sued directly for deprivations of a litigant’s constitutional rights.

Does Trump genuinely believe he’ll fare better in “Blue York” appeals courts than he would before the 2nd Circuit, which, just a week ago, affirmed E. Jean Carroll’s first trial victory against him? On one hand, he’d be foolish to do so; Merchan’s Jan. 3 opinion, for example, noted that the narrow gag order in the hush money case has been upheld no fewer than eight times between the two New York state appeals courts with jurisdiction.

But focusing on who ultimately wins or loses ignores the bigger issue here: delay. All Trump needs is one or more judges of the Appellate Division, First Department — the applicable first-tier appeals court — to press pause on the sentencing until 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 20, when Trump becomes president once more. That’s also when, by virtue of taking the oath and for the duration of his term in office, Trump will again have immunity from any and all prosecutions and related proceedings.

And where temporary stays are concerned, the First Department hasn’t always been a disappointment for Trump. On the contrary, it has come through for Trump on a handful of occasionsincluding by granting a two-week stay of a gag order in another case, thereby freeing Trump to speak freely about the alleged bias of the judge in that case and his law clerk. Now imagine how a two-week stay of the sentencing in this case would serve Trump’s objectives even more clearly: Pausing the sentencing for two weeks would mean that Trump, who will again become president on Jan. 20 at 12:01 p.m., could not be sentenced, if at all, until Jan. 20, 2029, when he is no longer president.

Trump and his lawyers asked Merchan to tell them by 2 p.m. ET on Monday whether he intends to go forward with sentencing; otherwise, they vowed to “seek an emergency appellate review.” Indeed, by Monday evening, Merchan had denied their stay request, finding Trump’s arguments to be primarily “a repetition of the arguments he has raised numerous times in the past.” And Trump’s team had filed his Article 78 actionwhich accuses Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of “serious and continuing infringement on his Presidential immunity from criminal process.”

Given this, I’m expecting a flurry of activity in New York appeals courts this week — and that none of it will end in a sentencing.

Watch this space.

The Dictatorship

E. Jean Carroll finally gets Trump’s $5 million — plus interest

Published

4 hours ago

July 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

E. Jean Carroll finally gets Trump’s $5 million — plus interest

Christmas. 14, 2026, 11:06 AM EDT

Writer E. Jean Carroll finally has the $5 million — plus interest — that a jury ordered President Donald Trump to pay her in damages in one of her two cases against him, after Trump fought the payout for years.

Court records posted Tuesday show a transfer of $5,625,005.48 to Carroll’s legal team took place the day before.

Carroll received the money more than three years after a jury found that the president was liable for sexually abusing her in a Manhattan department store in 1996, and then for defaming her on social media. Trump has repeatedly appealed the judgment to no avail — including petitioning the Supreme Court multiple times — and last week launched a last-ditch attempt to block her from getting the money.

Last Tuesday, his legal team filed a briefrequesting that the disbursement of the damages be halted, pointing to his pending request for the Supreme Court to reconsider its refusal to hear his appeal.

A federal judge nevertheless ordered Wednesday that Carroll be paid, prompting a swift appeal from Trump and a motion for an emergency administrative stay on the disbursement of the funds.

That request was denied.

“Three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll. Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict,” said Carroll’s lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan.

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

Lisa Rubin is MS NOW’s senior legal reporter and a former litigator.

The Dictatorship

Trump downplays importance of failing Iran deal that he previously celebrated

Published

4 hours ago

July 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump downplays importance of failing Iran deal that he previously celebrated

To the extent that the United States and Iran had a ceasefire deal in place to end the deadly, destabilizing war, that agreement has unraveled. Donald Trump has declared the ceasefire “over”; both countries have renewed their military strikes; and the American president is positioning the U.S. as a mercenary forcewith plans to charge tolls to pay for guarding the Strait of Hormuz.

As for the deal the Trump administration negotiated with Iran, formally known as a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, conservative host Hugh Hewitt asked the president whether the framework was “built to fall apart.” The Republican responded with an answer he hadn’t shared previously.

“It was built to test. It was a test,” Trump replied. “We didn’t know. It didn’t, look, memorandum of understanding, when you’re dealing with sleazebags, don’t mean much. And they don’t mean much when you’re dealing with honorable people, too, because it’s memorandum of understanding. It doesn’t mean much.”

The president went on to say that Iran “didn’t honor the test,” before suggesting that he had predicted from the outset that officials in Tehran would cause the agreement to collapse through noncompliance. “I said, ‘Watch, I guarantee. Watch.’ And they never, they never followed it.”

The apparent point of the on-air comments wasn’t merely to blame Iran for the unravelling deal, it was also to convey the suggestion that Trump knew all along Iran would cause the framework to collapse.

The trouble is, very recent history proves otherwise.

It was exactly one month ago when the president published a statement to his social media platform, announcing, “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all!” About an hour later, seemingly eager to pat himself on the back, he added“This Great Deal will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region. Many presidents have tried to make Peace with Iran, and all have failed before me. The Leaders of the Region have, for the first time, found a President who can help them achieve real Peace.”

In the days that followed, not only did Trump continue to celebrate his alleged triumph, but the White House invested an enormous amount of time and effort in touting the deal, all while Vice President JD Vance went on a media tour, doing his best to defend the policy on the merits.

There was nothing about this being a “test.” Not a word was uttered about the idea that the deal “doesn’t mean much.”

If the president expects his post hoc rationalization of this failure to persuade anyone, he’s probably going to be disappointed.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

The Dictatorship

GOP’s Ron Johnson shares, then retracts, a conspiratorial ‘rumor’ about Mitch McConnell

Published

4 hours ago

July 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

GOP’s Ron Johnson shares, then retracts, a conspiratorial ‘rumor’ about Mitch McConnell

We’ve known for a month that Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was hospitalized, but neither he nor anyone on his team has been willing to say why. Over the weekend, McConnell finally took steps to end the speculation, issuing a statement to explain that he’s been recovering from a fall, followed by what he described as “a mild case of pneumonia.”

The statement was accompanied by a photograph of the senator in a hospital bed alongside his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. For good measure, the image showed a newspaper — specifically, Sunday’s Washington Post sports section — in McConnell’s right hand.

It stood to reason that the statement and photo would revive the conversation about why the former Senate majority leader hadn’t disclosed any of these details earlier — the lack of transparency surrounding his personal health has long been a point of concern — but some in conservative politics went furtherfloating assorted conspiracy theories about the authenticity of the image of McConnell and his wife.

The chatter was not limited to the far-right fringe.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin appeared Monday on conservative media channel Real America’s Voice, where the senator told host Eric Bolling, in reference to the McConnell image, “I’ve just heard from some other sources that was an older photo. So I really don’t know.” (He did not identify his alleged “sources.”)

The Wisconsin Republican went on to say that he hadn’t spoken directly with McConnell, but that he hoped his colleague has a speedy recovery so he can return to Capitol Hill and help advance Donald Trump’s agenda.

Hours later, when pressed by reporters about his conspiratorial on-air comments, Johnson said, “It was a rumor, don’t — discount it, just discount it. … I just heard it, so assume it’s false.”

The bigger picture matters. Johnson isn’t just some guy; he’s a three-term member of the U.S. Senate who was speaking to a national television audience about an ailing colleague. It’s the opposite of his job to amplify baseless “rumors” and add fuel to fringe conspiracy theories. As the Wisconsin Republican really ought to know, those in his position have a responsibility to avoid conspiratorial nonsense.

What’s more, there’s the GOP senator’s track record to consider. Shortly after Trump grudgingly left the White House after his 2020 defeat, he was effectively banned from most major social media platforms and made few television appearances. Around this time, The New York Times described Johnson as Trump’s successor as the GOP’s “foremost amplifier of conspiracy theories and disinformation.”

In the years that followed, Johnson seemed a little too eager to prove his critics right, peddling bizarre and easily discredited nonsense about Covid-19. And the Jan. 6 attack. And vaccines. And climate change. And the 2020 presidential election. And the 2024 presidential election.

Last year, the Wisconsin Republican reached new depths, becoming the only senator from either party to embrace fringe ideas from the so-called 9/11 truther movement.

With this in mind, his on-air comments about McConnell and what he’s “heard from some other sources” are consistent with what we’ve come to expect from Johnson, though this only makes matters worse for his unfortunate reputation.

Finally, that the senator walked back his own rhetoric seemed like a step in the right direction, though I’m curious about his motivation: Did Johnson urge reporters to “discount” the “rumor” he spread because he recognized it as irresponsible, or was he scrambling to better position himself as the next chairman of the Senate Budget Committee in the wake of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s death?