A judge agreed Fri­day to post­pone Don­ald Trump’s sen­tenc­ing in his hush mon­ey case un­til af­ter the No­vem­ber elec­tion, grant­i­ng him a hard-won re­prieve as he nav­i­gates the af­ter­math of his crim­i­nal con­vic­tion and the home­stretch of his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.

Man­hat­tan Judge Juan M. Mer­chan, who is al­so weigh­ing a de­fense re­quest to over­turn the ver­dict on im­mu­ni­ty grounds, de­layed Trump’s sen­tenc­ing un­til No­vem­ber 26, three weeks af­ter the fi­nal votes are cast in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

It had been sched­uled for Sept. 18, about sev­en weeks be­fore Elec­tion Day. The new date is the Tues­day be­fore Thanks­giv­ing.

Mer­chan wrote that he was post­pon­ing the sen­tenc­ing “to avoid any ap­pear­ance — how­ev­er un­war­rant­ed — that the pro­ceed­ing has been af­fect­ed by or seeks to af­fect the ap­proach­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in which the De­fen­dant is a can­di­date.”

“The Court is a fair, im­par­tial, and apo­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion,” he added, writ­ing that his de­ci­sion “should dis­pel any sug­ges­tion” oth­er­wise.

Trump’s lawyers pushed for the de­lay on mul­ti­ple fronts, pe­ti­tion­ing the judge and ask­ing a fed­er­al court to in­ter­vene. They ar­gued that pun­ish­ing the for­mer pres­i­dent and cur­rent Re­pub­li­can nom­i­nee in the thick of his cam­paign to re­take the White House would amount to elec­tion in­ter­fer­ence.

Trump’s lawyers ar­gued that de­lay­ing his sen­tenc­ing un­til af­ter the elec­tion would al­so al­low him time to weigh next steps af­ter Mer­chan rules on the de­fense’s re­quest to re­verse his con­vic­tion and dis­miss the case be­cause of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Ju­ly pres­i­den­tial im­mu­ni­ty rul­ing.

In his or­der Fri­day, Mer­chan de­layed a de­ci­sion on that un­til No­vem­ber 12.

A fed­er­al judge on Tues­day re­ject­ed Trump’s re­quest to have the U.S. Dis­trict Court in Man­hat­tan seize the case from Mer­chan’s state court. Had they been suc­cess­ful, Trump’s lawyers said they would have then sought to have the ver­dict over­turned and the case dis­missed on im­mu­ni­ty grounds. Trump is ap­peal­ing the fed­er­al court de­ci­sion and asked the 2nd U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Ap­peals to halt post­con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings. That court has not yet ruled.

Mer­chan’s de­ci­sion con­tin­ued a string of good le­gal for­tune for Trump in the last two months. A fed­er­al case in Flori­da charg­ing him with il­le­gal­ly hoard­ing clas­si­fied doc­u­ments was dis­missed in Ju­ly, while the Supreme Court’s im­mu­ni­ty de­ci­sion will en­sure sig­nif­i­cant de­lays in a sep­a­rate fed­er­al case in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., ac­cus­ing him of try­ing to over­turn his 2020 elec­tion loss.

“There should be no sen­tenc­ing in the Man­hat­tan DA’s Elec­tion In­ter­fer­ence Witch Hunt,” Trump cam­paign spokesper­son Steven Che­ung said in a state­ment af­ter Mer­chan ruled. He said all cas­es against Trump should be dis­missed be­cause of the Supreme Court’s de­ci­sion.

A mes­sage seek­ing com­ment was left for the Man­hat­tan dis­trict at­tor­ney’s of­fice, which pros­e­cut­ed Trump’s case. That of­fice hadn’t tak­en a po­si­tion on the de­fense’s de­lay re­quest, de­fer­ring to Mer­chan.

Elec­tion Day is No­vem­ber 5, but many states al­low vot­ers to cast bal­lots ear­ly, with some set to start the process just a few days be­fore or af­ter the date Sep­tem­ber 18.

Trump was con­vict­ed in May on 34 counts of fal­si­fy­ing busi­ness records to con­ceal a $130,000 hush mon­ey pay­ment to porn ac­tor Stormy Daniels just be­fore the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Daniels claims she and Trump had a sex­u­al en­counter a decade ear­li­er af­ter they met at a celebri­ty golf tour­na­ment in Lake Tahoe.

Pros­e­cu­tors cast the pay­out as part of a Trump-dri­ven ef­fort to keep vot­ers from hear­ing sala­cious sto­ries about him dur­ing his first pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Trump’s for­mer lawyer Michael Co­hen paid Daniels and was lat­er re­im­bursed by Trump, whose com­pa­ny logged the re­im­burse­ments as le­gal ex­pens­es.

Trump main­tains that the sto­ries were false, that re­im­burse­ments were for le­gal work and logged cor­rect­ly, and that the case — brought by Man­hat­tan Dis­trict At­tor­ney Alvin Bragg, a De­mo­c­rat — was part of a po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed “witch hunt” aimed at dam­ag­ing his cur­rent cam­paign.

De­moc­rats back­ing their par­ty’s nom­i­nee, Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris, have made his con­vic­tion a fo­cus of their mes­sag­ing.

In speech­es at the par­ty’s con­vic­tion in Chica­go last month, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden called Trump a “con­vict­ed felon” run­ning against a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor. Rep. Jas­mine Crock­ett, D-Texas, la­belled Trump a “ca­reer crim­i­nal, with 34 felonies, two im­peach­ments and one porn star to prove it.”

Trump’s 2016 De­mo­c­ra­t­ic op­po­nent, for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton, in­spired chants of “lock him up” from the con­ven­tion crowd when she quipped that Trump “fell asleep at his own tri­al, and when he woke up, he made his own kind of his­to­ry: the first per­son to run for pres­i­dent with 34 felony con­vic­tions.”

Fal­si­fy­ing busi­ness records is pun­ish­able by up to four years be­hind bars. Oth­er po­ten­tial sen­tences in­clude pro­ba­tion, a fine or a con­di­tion­al dis­charge, which would re­quire Trump to stay out of trou­ble to avoid ad­di­tion­al pun­ish­ment. Trump is the first ex-pres­i­dent con­vict­ed of a crime.

Trump has pledged to ap­peal, but that can­not hap­pen un­til he is sen­tenced.

In seek­ing the de­lay, Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove ar­gued that the short time be­tween the sched­uled im­mu­ni­ty rul­ing on Sept. 16 and sen­tenc­ing, which was to have tak­en place two days lat­er, was un­fair to Trump.

To pre­pare for a Sept. 18 sen­tenc­ing, the lawyers said, pros­e­cu­tors would be sub­mit­ting their pun­ish­ment rec­om­men­da­tion while Mer­chan is still weigh­ing whether to dis­miss the case. If Mer­chan rules against Trump, he would need “ad­e­quate time to as­sess and pur­sue state and fed­er­al ap­pel­late op­tions,” they said.

The Supreme Court’s im­mu­ni­ty de­ci­sion reins in pros­e­cu­tions of ex-pres­i­dents for of­fi­cial acts and re­stricts pros­e­cu­tors in point­ing to of­fi­cial acts as ev­i­dence that a pres­i­dent’s un­of­fi­cial ac­tions were il­le­gal.

Trump’s lawyers ar­gue that in light of the rul­ing, ju­rors in the hush mon­ey case should not have heard such ev­i­dence as for­mer White House staffers de­scrib­ing how the then-pres­i­dent re­act­ed to news cov­er­age of the Daniels deal. —NEW YORK (AP)

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Sto­ry by MICHAEL R. SISAK and JEN­NIFER PELTZ | As­so­ci­at­ed Press