Trump and Hunter Biden prevent legal disputes before the election

This week marked a turning point in the legal battles involving former President Donald Trump and Hunter, the son of President Joe Biden.

Judge Juan Merchan made the decision on Friday to postpone Trump's sentencing hearing in Manhattan, originally scheduled for September 18, until three weeks after the election.

A day earlier, Judge Tanya Chutkan had set new deadlines for Trump's Jan. 6 case, which had been dormant for months while an appeal was pending before the Supreme Court. Chutkan's long-awaited timeline implied that no hearings would take place until after the election.

Meanwhile, on the same day Chutkan issued her order, Hunter Biden appeared in court to begin jury selection in his tax trial, but the First Son stunned the federal courtroom by announcing that he would plead guilty to all nine counts and accept whatever sentence the judge imposed on him.

The younger Biden's decision to plead guilty allowed him to avoid a weeks-long, salacious trial that would have exposed the darkest times of his life, when he was pursuing controversial multimillion-dollar overseas deals, addicted to crack cocaine and neglecting his taxes.

When Joe Biden was seeking re-election, his son's trial threatened to seriously jeopardize his presidential campaign. But since the president dropped his re-election bid in July, Hunter Biden's turmoil has lost some of its political luster.

Trump's four criminal prosecutions, on the other hand, were at one point destined to be the defining event of 2024. All four cases were to go to trial, meaning Trump would spend weeks in court when he should have been campaigning.

That expectation ultimately did not materialize. Trump's secret documents case in Florida was dismissed and is now under appeal by special counsel Jack Smith. The former president's election interference case in Georgia is also before an appeals court and will not be decided for months. Legal experts have speculated that the Georgia case could have a bleak future following the Supreme Court's landmark ruling on presidential immunity. That ruling also had a direct and immediate impact on Trump's Jan. 6 case, where, as Chutkan admitted in a hearing this week, there is no trial in sight while so many new outstanding questions remain to be resolved.

For Trump's critics, the only positive moment was Trump's conviction in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records – a charge that carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison – as they had hoped the former president would face the consequences of his alleged misconduct.

However, Trump will not see any punishment imposed on him for his conviction in this case before voters go to the polls, as he was able to successfully apply the Supreme Court ruling in this case as well.

Merchan's order came in response to Trump's repeated requests to delay sentencing. Trump argued, among other things, that the Supreme Court's ruling in the case must be reviewed before a verdict can be rendered and that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had not opposed the request. In granting Merchan's request, the judge also openly admitted that the upcoming election contributed to his decision to make the change.

“The sentencing is adjourned to avoid any appearance, however unjustified, that the proceedings have been influenced or are attempting to be influenced by the upcoming presidential election in which the defendant is a candidate,” Merchan wrote in his order.

Trump celebrated the decision, saying on Truth Social that it was made “because everyone realizes there WAS NO CASE, I DID NOTHING WRONG!”

Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project and a Trump supporter, said a prison sentence for Trump would have cemented the former president's election victory and that Merchan's move appears to be part of a “tactical retreat” by judges and prosecutors in Trump's cases.

“The Democrats know that if they throw Trump in jail before the election, they will turn him into Nelson Mandela and that he will win a landslide,” Davis told the ^ “Washington Examiner”.

Many in left-wing circles criticized this decision, blaming the Republicans and complaining that, in their opinion, Trump did not bear the necessary responsibility.

“The bottom line on today's postponement of sentencing: MAGA bullying works. Sigh,” wrote New York attorney Karen Agnifilo, who worked in the Manhattan district attorney's office, on X.

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The Defend Democracy Project blamed conservative Supreme Court justices, calling two of them “compromised” because of questions from Democrats about the political activism of Justice Clarence Thomas' wife and Justice Samuel Alito's flag controversy.

“Now he will face sentencing after the election because the three Supreme Court justices he appointed, as well as two judges compromised by their wives' support for the insurrection, have fabricated a pretext of presidential immunity,” the group said in a statement.