President-elect Donald Trump urged the US Supreme Court Wednesday to take the extraordinary step of halting his sentencing later this week in his Manhattan “hush money” case.
Trump’s lawyers urged the nation’s highest court to step in after a New York appeals court refused to postpone the Friday hearing, at which he is set to face a no-punishment sentence.
The attorneys argued that going ahead with the sentencing would unconstitutionally interfere with Trump preparing for his second term.
Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to call off Friday’s sentencing in his hush money case in New York. via REUTERS“This Court should enter an immediate stay of further proceedings in the New York trial court to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government,” attorneys Todd Blanche, Emil Bove and D. John Sauer wrote.
The Supreme Court asked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to respond by Thursday at 10 a.m.
Trump’s lawyers also simultaneously asked New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals in Albany, to stay the sentencing, according to the US Supreme Court filing.
The judge overseeing the hush money case, Juan Merchan, last week set sentencing for Jan. 10 — just 10 days before Trump’s second inauguration as president.
The judge said that he planned to give Trump the most lenient possible sentence — no jail time, fine or probation. He also will let Trump appear virtually for the 9:30 a.m. hearing in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Trump, 78, can’t appeal to overturn the conviction until the sentencing is complete.
Juan M. Merchan, the judge who presided over Trump’s trial and conviction last May, refused to postpone Trump’s sentencing. APA Manhattan jury in May found the real estate mogul-turned-politician guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for lying on company files to conceal a 2016 payoff by his former fixer, Michael Cohen, to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
The payoff was meant to stop Daniels from telling her story about having sex with a married Trump in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite years earlier, according to trial testimony.
Trump was originally set to be sentenced in July, in the final stretch of his presidential campaign.
But Merchan agreed to push back the proceeding after the Supreme Court issued its bombshell “presidential immunity” ruling, in which the justices ruled that presidents cannot be prosecuted for their “official acts.”
Trump’s lawyers argue that the trial — which featured a salacious stint on the stand by Daniels — was “tainted” by evidence introduced from Trump’s time in the White House.
Trump’s attorneys asked for an immediate stay of Friday’s sentencing “to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government.” APBut Merchan disagreed, and upheld the verdict in December.
Trump’s attorneys have also argued that he can’t be sentenced as president-elect because he has the same immunity from criminal proceedings that a president does. But Blanche admitted to a New York appeals judge Tuesday that there are no other cases he can use as “support” for that claim.
“Do you have any support for the notion that presidential immunity extends to presidents elect?” Justice Ellen Gesmer pressed.
“There has never been a case like this, so no,” Blanche replied.
