Trump asks Supreme Court to delay hush money sentencing

WASHINGTON (CN) — President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to take emergency action preventing his Friday sentencing hearing for felony counts related to a hush-money scheme.

Trump suggested he was entitled to an automatic pause on the New York trial court proceedings scheduled for Friday morning because he is pursuing a presidential immunity claim challenging his conviction on 34 felony counts. The president-elect predicted that his appeal would dismiss the “politically motivated prosecution,” urging the justices to prevent “a grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency.”

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over the hush money case, made an exception that Trump would be allowed to attend his sentencing remotely. Still, Trump says holding the hearing at “the apex of the presidential transition period” violates due process and New York criminal law.

“The prospect of imposing sentence on President Trump just before he assumes Office as the 47th President raises the specter of other possible restrictions on liberty, such as travel, reporting requirements, registration, probationary requirements, and others — all of which would be constitutionally intolerable under the doctrine of Presidential immunity,” John Sauer, Trump’s attorney and pick for solicitor general, wrote.

In a blockbuster ruling favoring Trump last June, the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court found that former presidents had absolute immunity for duties within their core powers and some immunity for other official actions. Although the ruling stemmed from an appeal in Trump’s D.C. election subversion case, the president-elect claims it also voided his New York charges.

Trump claims that his New York conviction relied on the evidentiary use of his official acts. He argued that upholding a conviction based on protected conduct threatened to eviscerate the immunity recognized by the Supreme Court.

A New York appellate judge refused to postpone Trump’s sentencing on Tuesday. Associate Justice Ellen Gesmer of New York’s Appellate Division, First Department said that the proximity to the inauguration was due to motions filed by Trump, delaying his initial sentencing date in July.

A Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records last year. The crimes stem from hush money he paid to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Merchan has ruled out jail time, suggesting he would seek unconditional discharge — a sentence preserving the jury’s verdict but preventing Trump from serving any punishment so he could focus on his presidency.

Trump argued that any adjudication of his felony convictions carried collateral consequences even if imprisonment was off the table. The president-elect claimed that the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling prevented him from answering for his conduct in court.

“Forcing a President to continue to defend a criminal case — potentially through trial or, even more dramatically here, through sentencing and judgment — while the appellate courts are still grappling with his claim of immunity would, in fact, force that President to answer for his conduct in court’ before his claim of immunity is finally adjudicated,” Trump’s attorney wrote.

The Supreme Court asked New York to file an expedited response to Trump’s application by 10 a.m. on Thursday to allow the justices to issue a ruling before the scheduled sentencing hearing.

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