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Judge delays Trump sentencing to decide where case should go next
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Judge delays Trump sentencing to decide where case should go next

NEW YORK — A judge confirmed Friday that President-elect Donald Trump will not be sentenced this month in his hush money case, instead setting a timetable for prosecutors and his lawyers to develop their ideas about what happens next. .

Amid a wave of complaints filed in the case since Trump’s election victory this month, it had already become clear that the Nov. 26 sentencing date would not stand. Judge Juan M. Merchan’s order Friday made that official without setting a new one.

He called on both sides to make more moves over the next two and a half weeks on how to proceed in light of Trump’s imminent return to the White House.

Trump’s lawyers want the case dismissed outright and immediately. They said it would otherwise interfere with his transition and presidential duties.

Prosecutors indicated they were willing to put the case on hold, perhaps for as long as he was in office, but they did not want it to be dropped entirely. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, said the solution must balance the obligations of the presidency with “the sanctity of the jury’s verdict.”

Bragg’s office declined to comment on Friday’s decision. Trump spokesman and new White House communications director Steven Cheung hailed it as “a decisive victory” for Trump.

Trump, a Republican, was convicted in May of falsifying his company records to conceal the true nature of a payment chain that provided $130,000 to porn actor Stormy Daniels. She received it, through Trump’s then-lawyer, in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.

The payment was intended to silence her about a sexual relationship she says she had with the married Trump a decade earlier. He denies her claim and says he did nothing wrong.