Alina Habba, one of former President Trump’s attorneys, said the New York hush money case should be “admonished” after the judge delayed Trump’s sentencing until after the election, writing it off as “a joke.”
Habba joined Fox News’s Sean Hannity Saturday to discuss the case after Judge Juan Merchan pushed Trump’s sentencing back to Nov. 26, handing the GOP nominee a win.
“It’s a joke,” she said of the case. “There’s so much wrong with this case. It should be completely admonished. The judge should be admonished, in my opinion, for not … recusing, number one, for not dismissing and for continuing to waste taxpayer dollars.”
“This is a joke and an atrocity that the American people and the city of New York is seeing it,” Habba continued. “That’s why they’ve got crime and that’s why people are fleeing.”
Merchan was initially set to sentence Trump on Sept. 18 but granted the delay after the former president said he would appeal if the judge doesn’t toss out the case after the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity. The judge said his decision would ensure that the presidential election in November is not affected by his judgment, and vice versa.
Habba claimed Saturday that the “entire case is flawed” given the immunity ruling, which largely shields former presidents from criminal prosecution for actions they take while in office.
In the past, she was not optimistic that the New York court would “do the right thing” in the case. Saturday, she expressed more distress.
“The fact that he is kicking the can down the road, while it is appreciated because he doesn’t want to appear to be doing what I and you have called election interference, which is what it is, great, however, this case should be, frankly, dismissed,” Habba told Hannity.
“So, hitting the can down the road, I appreciate, but quite honestly, Sean, this should be vacated in its entirety,” she added.
Trump was convicted by a New York jury on 34 counts of falsifying business records, stemming from a hush money payment made to an adult film star to cover up an alleged past affair during the 2016 election. The verdict made him the first sitting or former president to be convicted in a criminal trial.
While the payment occurred before he took office, Trump’s legal team has contended that the jury improperly used social media posts from his time in the Oval Office and other evidence that would be protected under the high court’s 6-3 ruling.
