(NEW YORK) — The New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, has denied President-elect Donald Trump’s request to halt his sentencing Friday in his criminal hush money case.
Trump on Wednesday launched an eleventh-hour request to New York’s highest court to pause the hush money case, on the same day that he also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his sentencing.
Trump’s argument to delay his sentencing rests on an “utterly baseless” concept of president-elect immunity, prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office argued in a filing to New York’s highest appeals court Thursday morning before the court made its ruling.
Responding to Trump’s New York filing, lawyers for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg urged the New York Court of Appeals to reject Trump’s request for a delay because a president-elect does not benefit from the immunity reserved for the sitting president.
“The President-elect is, by definition, not yet the President,” the filing said. “The President-elect therefore does not perform any Article II functions under the Constitution, and there are no Article II functions that would be burdened by ordinary criminal process involving the President-elect.”
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced Friday after he was found guilty in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
Prosecutors in their filing Thursday signaled confidence in the strength of their case, claiming that the jury saw “overwhelming” evidence of Trump’s guilt and criticizing the president-elect’s contemptuous conduct in court.
“And notwithstanding defendant’s past and upcoming service as President, his history, character, and condition — and especially his open disregard for the justice system — do not support dismissal,” the filing said.
Prosecutors criticized Trump for repeatedly delaying the sentencing — leading to the Jan. 10 sentencing date — and exaggerating the harm he would face if the sentencing continued as planned.
The president-elected faces up to four years in prison, but New York Judge Juan Merchan has signaled that he plans to sentence Trump to an unconditional discharge — effectively a blemish on Trump’s record, without prison, fines or probation — in order to respect Trump’s transition efforts and the principle of presidential immunity.
Prosecutors highlighted in their filing that Merchan intends to sentence Trump to the lowest allowable sentence.
“Indeed, if defendant is ever to be sentenced in this proceeding, the least burdensome time to do so is now, before his inauguration on January 20, 2025,” the filing said.
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