ALSO SEE: Judge Delays Trump’s Sentencing Until Nov. 26, After Election Day

For weeks now, it’s been up in the air whether Donald Trump’s sentencing in the hush money trial would go ahead on Sept. 18 as scheduled. On Friday, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan officially decided that Trump’s sentencing will be postponed until Nov. 26—three weeks after the presidential election.

“Unfortunately, we are now in a place in time that is fraught with complexities rendering the requirements of a sentencing hearing, should one be necessary, difficult to execute,” Merchan wrote.

In May, a jury found the former president guilty of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in order to cover up hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the months leading up to the 2016 election. Merchan had initially scheduled Trump’s sentencing for July 11, but 10 days before it was set to happen, the Supreme Court issued its bombshell presidential immunity decision. Merchan bumped Trump’s sentencing to Sept. 18 to allow the defense and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg time to consider how the high court’s decision might impact the verdict. The justice was also scheduled to issue his own decision about how the Supreme Court’s immunity decision impacts the hush money case on Sept. 16.

The Supreme Court decision gave Trump’s lawyers new ammunition, and since then, they’ve done everything they could to delay the sentencing. They also tried and failed three times to remove Merchan from the case and wrote a letter to the justice arguing they would need more than two days between his Sept. 16 ruling and the sentencing itself. They also filed a motion to dismiss Trump’s criminal conviction, arguing prosecutors violated the Supreme Court’s immunity decision by having Trump’s former White House aide Hope Hicks testify in front of the jury.

Meanwhile the DA has stayed relatively quiet, telling Merchan he didn’t have a preference on whether to delay or keep Trump’s Sept. 18 sentencing date. Instead, he indicated he would defer to Merchan’s judgment on the matter. Dennis Fan, a Columbia law professor who was formerly a federal prosecutor, believes that likely played a role in Merchan’s decision to delay sentencing until after the election, on top of the complexity of sorting out the presidential immunity issue.

In his Friday decision, Merchan wrote at length about how important it is to maintain the integrity of the judicial system, noting Trump’s sentencing date was within “approximately 41 days of the 2024 presidential election.” Fan isn’t surprised at Merchan’s decision. “I think what’s driving him is a worry that people may view either a harsh or a lenient sentence as being driven by electoral considerations,” he said in an email to Slate.

If Trump wins the election on Nov. 5, it’s not clear what will happen with his Nov. 26 sentencing. But if Trump wins a second term in the White House, he will not be able to single-handedly vacate his conviction—it’s a felony conviction on state charges, and the president can only pardon those convicted of federal offenses.