Trump Asks Supreme Court To Block Hush Money Sentencing

President-elect Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to halt his Friday sentencing for his hush money criminal conviction after a New York appeals court judge declined to intervene.

Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency application with the high court early Wednesday after the New York appeals court on Tuesday turned down his request to indefinitely postpone the sentencing.

“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,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in the filing.

The trial court judge scheduled to sentence Trump on Friday, Justice Juan Merchan, has indicated he doesn’t plan to send Trump to jail and will permit him to attend the proceeding virtually. Still, Trump’s lawyers told the Supreme Court that the sentencing will result in “burden, disruption, stigma, and distraction” to him as he carries out his duties as president-elect.

A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office prosecuted the case against Trump, said: “We will respond in court papers.”

A spokesperson for Trump, Steven Cheung, said the president-elect was “asking the Court to correct the unjust actions by New York courts and stop the unlawful sentencing in the Manhattan D.A.’s Witch Hunt.”

A jury in Manhattan found Trump guilty last May on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels that witnesses said was aimed at bottling up a story that Trump had sex with her at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. Trump has denied having sex with Daniels.

Trump’s Supreme Court filing argues that he’s protected from prosecution by the court’s decision last summer in another case against him, where the justices found that presidents have criminal immunity in connection with some official acts. Trump’s lawyers argued to Merchan that some of the testimony at his hush money trial implicated his official duties and undercut the conviction, but the judge disagreed.

Trump is seeking to have his conviction tossed on the grounds that he is protected by presidential immunity, and he wants the sentencing canceled while he appeals the verdict.

Trump lawyers John Sauer and Todd Blanche, whom Trump has tapped for roles in his next administration, also argue in the high court filing that laws Congress has passed recognize the critical nature of the presidential transition period and that any disruption to that process must be avoided.

“President Trump is currently engaged in the most crucial and sensitive tasks of preparing to assume the Executive Power in less than two weeks, all of which are essential to the United States’ national security and vital interests,” wrote Sauer, his pick for solicitor general, and Blanche, whom he tapped to be deputy attorney general. “These demands of time, energy, and attention are just as unconstitutionally burdensome and disruptive during the Presidential transition as during the Presidency itself.”

Trump’s emergency application was submitted to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who asked Bragg’s office to respond by 10 a.m. Thursday. Sotomayor, who oversees emergency matters arising from New York, is all but certain to refer the matter to the full bench of the Supreme Court for a decision. The votes of a majority of the justices will be needed to grant the stay Trump is seeking.

Trump’s filing also asks the justices to temporarily halt the sentencing scheduled Friday if they need more time to make a decision. Since many legal experts believe state courts have no power over a sitting president, any further postponement of the sentencing runs the risk that it would not take place before Trump is inaugurated Jan. 20. That would mean Trump’s conviction would not be finalized before he takes office and might never be legally effective.