Trump became the first former US president convicted of felony charges and was originally set to be sentenced next week.

The judge in Donald Trump’s hush money case has granted a request to delay the former United States president’s sentencing until at least September.

The decision on Tuesday follows a ruling by the US Supreme Court that ordered broad criminal immunity for presidents in their official acts.

Trump’s legal team had cited the top court’s decision in a letter to Judge Juan Merchan requesting the delay in the sentencing, which was originally scheduled on July 11.

The lawyers representing Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, told Merchan they needed time to build their case that Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges of falsifying business documents to cover up hush money payments made to an adult actress should be overturned in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Before Merchan’s decision, prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office said Trump’s argument was “without merit” but agreed to delay the sentencing.

Merchan said the sentencing would be delayed until at least September 18, less than two months before the November 8 elections.

Prosecutors had argued that Trump falsified business records to cover up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence on an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.

They directly connected the payments to a wider scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election.

In their letter to Merchan, Trump’s lawyers argued that during the trial, prosecutors had presented evidence involving Trump’s official acts as president, including social media posts he made and conversations he had while in the White House.

That evidence should have been protected under presidential immunity, the lawyers said, per the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling.

The ruling from the majority of six justices on the nine-member bench said presidents have “absolute immunity” from criminal liability for any acts within their “core constitutional powers”. Evidence related to those official acts also may not be presented at a trial, the majority opinion said.

However, the ruling, which was assailed by the court’s three liberal justices, said presidents could still be prosecuted for acts outside those powers. The exact delineations remain unclear.

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned the decision opened the door to “nightmare scenarios”, including possible immunity for assassinating a political rival.

“In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law,” she wrote.

Political implications

The Supreme Court ruling bodes well for Trump, who faces three additional criminal trials.

It is expected to be the most bedeviling to the legal argument at the heart of a federal case related to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results after his loss to President Joe Biden.

It could also have implications for a state trial in Georgia related to efforts to pressure officials to change the 2020 vote count as well as a second federal trial related to Trump allegedly hiding and hoarding classified White House documents at his Florida estate.

The New York trial, however, was the only trial expected to finish before the election. While the initial guilty verdict did not show a major shift in support for Trump, analysts have argued that a severe sentence could turn off some would-be Trump voters.

Merchan’s decision comes five days after Biden delivered a dismal performance in the first presidential debate against Trump, which has sent the Democrat’s campaign into damage control while bringing concerns over the 81-year-old’s age to the fore.

On Tuesday, a Reuters/Ipsos poll was released showing one in three Democrats think Biden should end his re-election bid after the debate performance. Still, the poll found no prominent elected Democrat would perform any better than Biden in a hypothetical matchup against Trump.

On Wednesday, Biden was reportedly set to meet with Democratic governors in an effort to allay their concerns.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre also said Biden would give his first post-debate interview to ABC News on Friday and would hold a news conference during a NATO conference next week.

She reiterated that Biden has no intention of dropping out of the race.

NEW YORK (AP) — Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, federal prosecutor and legal adviser to Donald Trump, was disbarred in the state on Tuesday after a court found he repeatedly made false statements about Trump’s 2020 election loss.

A New York appeals court in Manhattan ruled that Giuliani, who had already had his New York law license suspended in 2021 for false statements he made after the election, is now “disbarred from the practice of law, effective immediately, and until the further order of this Court, and his name stricken from the roll of attorneys and counselors-at-law in the State of New York.”

Giuliani’s attorney Arthur Aidala said they were “obviously disappointed” but not surprised by the decision. He said they “put up a valiant effort” to prevent the disbarment but “saw the writing on the wall.”

The court said in its decision that Giuliani “essentially conceded” most of the facts supporting the alleged acts of misconduct during hearings held in October 2023. Instead, the decision said, he argued that he “lacked knowledge that statements he had made were false and that he had a good faith basis to believe the allegations he made to support his claim that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen from his client.”

The court said it found that Giuliani “falsely and dishonestly” claimed during the 2020 Presidential election that thousands of votes were cast in the names of dead people in Philadelphia, including a ballot in the name of the late boxing great Joe Frazier. He also falsely claimed people were taken from nearby Camden, New Jersey, to vote illegally in the Pennsylvania city, the court said.

The order states that Giuliani must “desist and refrain from practicing law in any form,” including “giving to another an opinion as to the law or its application or any advice” or “holding himself out in any way as an attorney and counselor-at-law.”

Before pleading Trump’s case in November 2020, Giuliani had not appeared in court as an attorney since 1992, according to court records.

The disbarment comes amid mounting woes for Giuliani, who filed for bankruptcy last year after he was ordered to pay $148 million in damages to two former Georgia election workers over lies he spread about them that upended their lives with racist threats and harassment.

Giuliani is also facing criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona over his role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. He has pleaded not guilty in both cases.

He’s charged in Georgia with making false statements and soliciting false testimony, conspiring to create phony paperwork and asking state lawmakers to violate their oath of office to appoint an alternate slate of pro-Trump electors.

The Arizona indictment accuses Giuliani of pressuring Maricopa County officials and state legislators to change the outcome of Arizona’s results and encouraging Republican electors in the state to vote for Trump in December 2020.

Giuliani built his public persona by practicing law, as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan in the 1980s, when he went after mobsters, powerbrokers and others. The law-and-order reputation helped catapult him into politics, governing the United States’ most populous city when it was beset by high crime.

His leadership of the stricken city after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001 earned him the image of “America’s mayor.” The Republican was lauded for holding the city together after two hijacked planes slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, killing more than 2,700 people.

But after unsuccessful runs for the U.S. Senate and the presidency, and a lucrative career as a globetrotting consultant, Giuliani smashed his image as a centrist who could get along with Democrats as he became one of Trump’s most loyal defenders.

He was the primary mouthpiece for Trump’s false claims of election fraud after the 2020 vote, infamously standing at a press conference in front of Four Seasons Total Landscaping outside Philadelphia on the day the race was called for Democrat Joe Biden over the Republican Trump and saying they would challenge what he claimed was a vast conspiracy by Democrats.

Lies around the election results helped push an angry mob of pro-Trump rioters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to stop the certification of Biden’s victory.

In May, WABC radio suspended Giuliani and canceled his daily talk show because he refused to stop making false claims about the 2020 election.

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Associated Press reporters Karen Matthews and Jennifer Peltz in New York, Michael Sisak in Fort Pierce, Fla., and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this story.

Iran vowed on Tuesday to back the terrorist organization Hezbollah “by all means” against Israel if Jerusalem launches an offensive in neighboring Lebanon.

Kamal Kharrazi, Iranian foreign minister and top advisor to Iran’s supreme leader, issued a stark warning that a conflict in Lebanon could result in a regional war involving all Arab nations. 

“All Lebanese people, Arab countries and members of the Axis of Resistance will support Lebanon against Israel,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times. “There would be a chance of expansion of the war to the whole region, in which all countries including Iran would become engaged.”

“In that situation, we would have no choice, but to support Hezbollah by all means,” he added. 

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Kharrazi noted that “the expansion of war is not in the interest of anyone – not Iran or the U.S.,” but his comments came just one day after a top Iranian commander said he was itching for the opportunity to levy more strikes against Israel.

Speaking to the families of Palestinians killed during the fight in the Gaza Strip on Monday, Brigadier General of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force Amir Ali Hajizadeh said he is “hopeful” another strike will be carried out against Jerusalem following the first attack in April.

Kamal Kharrazi, then foreign minister of Iran, waits to speak at the United Nations May 3, 2005 in New York City. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

“We are hopeful of the arrival of the opportunity for [conducting] Operation True Promise 2,” Hajizadeh said, according to Iranian-owned media outlet Mehr News Agency.

The comments were in reference to the more than 300 drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles Tehran reportedly fired at Israel on April 14, the majority of which were stopped by Israeli and U.S. forces.

Commander of Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Amir Ali Hajizadeh gives a speech as Iran presents its first hypersonic ballistic missile “Fattah” (Conqueror) at an event in Tehran, Iran, on June 6, 2023. (Sepah News / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

The strike marked the first time Iran directly attacked Israel despite years of proxy fighting and apparent covert hits on top military targets. 

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Hajizadeh, who has played a critical role in developing Iran’s drone and missile program, did not say what the next attack against Jerusalem would look like but promised to continue supporting terrorists in the ongoing war against Israel. 

“As it is obvious from the weapons of our dear ones in Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere, it has now become clear that they are in fact being helped and supplied by Iran,” he said, according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency.

An arch glorifying Hezbollah and baring pictures of its chief Hassan Nasrallah, right, and Iran’s spiritual leader Ali Khamenei decorates a street of Beirut’s southern suburb on Jan. 16, 2011. ( Photo: ANWAR AMRO/AFP via Getty Images)

Tehran’s involvement in Jerusalem’s fight in the Gaza Strip has increasingly drawn international concern. Iran expert and senior fellow with The Foundation for Defense of Democracies Behnam Ben Taleblu said the strike in April “means that never again can the threat of a direct attack by the Islamic Republic against Israel be ignored.”

“That large a volley of cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones was designed to kill just as much as it was designed to send a message,” he added.

Smoke and flames rise following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, Gaza, on Nov. 2, 2023. (Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The Hajizadeh’s comments came just days after Iran’s mission to the United Nations also threatened an “obliterating war” against Israel if it launched an offensive in Lebanon against Hezbollah – a scenario Taleblu said Iran is using to exacerbate a “cycle of violence against Israel.”

“We are in the incubation phase of greater militia coordination. As Hamas fights Israel, Hezbollah is drawing resources from the south toward the north, while proxies in Yemen and Iraq are trying to synchronize their fire against the Jewish state,” he warned. “In the interim, Tehran is benefiting from the chaos.”