Fox News contributor and Georgetown University law professor Jonathan Turley has offered up an explanation as to why New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan has delayed sentencing in the hush money trial of former President Donald Trump.

During a segment late last week on the network, Turley said that he believes the judge was aware that any sentence would assist the former president before the election.

“Any sentencing that Merchan would have come down with, I think, would have not been particularly welcome by most of the public. It would have reminded them of this campaign against the former president,” he said. “So in some ways, I think the Harris campaign is probably celebrating that they won’t have that attention on the Manhattan case.”

“I was not one of those that was piling on Merchan, but I have to say, after sitting in his courtroom, I was very surprised in what I thought was a one-sided approach to that trial … There was, in my view, a lack of balance there. We have not heard this type of language from Merchan,” the professor said. “He refused to do things during the trial that could have accommodated the environment in which the trial was occurring, including a gag order that I think was excessive.”

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“And the irony, of course, was that the former president’s polls went up when he was gagged, partially, I think, because people saw the unfairness, partially because he sort of stayed on script,” he said. “That may have weighed in all of this. Merchan actually witnessed how his conduct at the trial, the trial itself, worked in Trump’s favor. That would have been nothing in comparison to what would have happened if he sentenced Trump to home confinement or to jail. I think Merchan was aware of that.”

During the trial, the professor spoke to Fox News host Sean Hannity and said the judge’s courtroom was “otherworldly.”

“It’s not that I haven’t seen anything like this, I haven’t even read anything like this. What I saw in that courtroom was otherworldly. I really attempted to give the judge the benefit of doubt on many occasions but what I saw today was, frankly, outrageous,” the professor said.

“At one point, the prosecutor actually said Michael Cohen committed federal election violations upon the orders of Donald Trump. Now, Merchan, has given an instruction that the jury is not to supposed to attribute the plea deal as an issue of guilt towards Trump. So the defense and Merchan just overruled it and allowed the prosecutor to repeatedly state that the federal election violations by Trump are a fact and there is not any dispute to that and Merchan just sat there,” he said.

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“He was as useful as a Ficus plant in that courtroom. I kept on waiting, looking at him for some sign he was even listening to some of these arguments. At one point one of the prosecutors said that Hope Hicks burst into tears because she knew that she destroyed any defense by Donald Trump. Really? How do you know that? And another point, the prosecutor basically started to testify and said that catch-and-kill techniques are just not used in media or politics, that this is beyond anything that the media or political groups have ever done. That’s not in the record. He was giving testimony. There’s no expert for that,” the professor said.

“Hillary Clinton killed and planted cases in that very election. Some of the most outrageous hoaxes were perpetrated by the Hillary Clinton campaign with an enabling media. In fact, many of those reporters listening helped the Hillary campaign do that. That’s what was so otherworldly about today. And I can’t imagine a jury member going into deliberations and not assuming that it is an established fact that federal election law violations have occurred in this case because Trump has allowed the prosecutors to say it dozens of times,” he said.