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(CN) — After failing to get a mid-level appellate court in New York to grant an interim stay of his upcoming hush money sentencing, President-elect Donald Trump is now trying his luck in the state’s highest court.
Trump’s legal team on Wednesday filed an order to show cause in the New York Court of Appeals, the latest effort by the incoming president to push off his criminal sentencing planned for Friday.
Trump claims that because he is appealing the case, the presiding judge “lacks authority to proceed with the sentencing hearing scheduled for Jan. 10, 2025, or to conduct any further proceedings in the underlying criminal case” until that appeal is wrapped up.
The first current or former president in U.S. history to be charged with a crime, Trump was found guilty last year of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money scheme surrounding his 2016 presidential campaign.
Last week, a stunning order from a New York judge set the date for the long-awaited sentencing hearing, which had been indefinitely delayed after Trump won the 2024 presidential election in November. New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan denied Trump’s numerous requests to vacate the guilty verdict on presidential immunity grounds, but indicated that he does not intend to sentence Trump to jail time, despite such a punishment being on the table for these crimes.
Since that ruling, Trump and his legal team have been pulling out all the stops in a desperate last-ditch effort to put the sentencing on ice before he is inaugurated on Jan. 20.
Trump has been steadfast in his assertion that presidents-elect are afforded the same immunity from prosecution as sitting presidents. He holds that his sentencing hearing must be stayed until that issue is ultimately decided.
Earlier Wednesday, Trump took the argument to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he repeated once again that he is entitled to an automatic pause on all of his criminal proceedings while he appeals the immunity issue.
“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,” Trump argued Wednesday in a 51-page application to the Supreme Court.
It’s a tricky topic since, as both prosecutors and Trump’s defense attorneys have admitted, there is virtually no prior case law on whether presidents-elect are protected under presidential immunity in the same way that the sitting commander-in-chief is.
So far, Trump’s arguments have been futile. Merchan declined to push off the sentencing any further earlier this week, and Trump’s emergency application for an interim stay in a mid-level New York appeals court proved unsuccessful, too.
“Do you have any support for the notion that presidential immunity extends to presidents-elect?” Associate Justice Ellen Gesmer of New York’s Appellate Division, First Department, asked Trump’s defense attorney Todd Blanche on Tuesday.
“There has never been any case like this before, so no,” Blanche replied, less than an hour before Gesmer struck down his effort.
Still, Trump is trying the same argument to the New York Court of Appeals:
“A sitting president is absolutely immune from any criminal process, state or federal, and this doctrine of immunity extends to the President-elect in the brief but critical period between his election and his inauguration, when he leads the nation through the complex, sensitive process of presidential transition,” he argued in Wednesday’s filing.
Merchan is expected to give Trump a sentence of unconditional discharge, writing in a Jan. 3 ruling that he views it to be the “most viable solution” given Trump’s impending return to the White House. The unique sentence would keep Trump from having to serve a tangible punishment, such as community service or a fine, but would preserve the jury’s guilty verdict and cement Trump’s status as a convicted felon.
If the sentencing hearing takes place as planned on Friday, prosecutors say Trump will appear virtually.
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