US Supreme Court refuses to stop sentencing of Trump in New York money laundering case Reuters

By Andrew Chung and John Kruzel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s request to stay a New York state court sentencing the president-elect on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star.

The court rejected Trump’s last-minute bid to block his sentencing, scheduled for 9:30 a.m. (14:30 GMT) Friday in New York state court in Manhattan.

Trump sought help from judges as he filed an appeal in state court to address issues of presidential immunity following a Supreme Court ruling last July that granted former presidents broad immunity from prosecution for their official acts.

The justices acted after the New York Supreme Court on Thursday rejected Trump’s request to stay his ruling.

Prosecutors in Manhattan filed a brief with the Supreme Court Thursday morning, opposing Trump’s bid for a delay.

“Defendant now asks this court to take the extraordinary step of intervening in a pending state criminal trial to prevent the imposition of a scheduled sentence—before the trial court enters final judgment and before any direct appellate review of defendant’s conviction. There is no basis for such intervention.” ” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office wrote in the filing.

The judge in Trump’s case, Judge Juan Merchan, said last week that he was not inclined to sentence the Republican president-elect to prison and would likely release him unconditionally. That would find Trump guilty, but not jail time, fines or probation.

In a Supreme Court filing released Wednesday, Trump requested a stay of proceedings in the case as he seeks an appeal to resolve the issue of presidential immunity following a Supreme Court ruling last July that granted former presidents broad immunity from prosecution for their official actions.

“This appeal will ultimately result in the dismissal of the District Attorney’s politically motivated prosecution that was flawed from the start,” Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer, wrote in the filing.

Sauer is Trump’s pick for U.S. Solicitor General, the government’s top Supreme Court lawyer.

Trump was found guilty last May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence before the 2016 US election about sexual contact she said she had with Trump a decade earlier, and which he denied. Prosecutors said the payment was designed to help Trump’s prospects in the 2016 election, when he defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump is the first former US president to be prosecuted and the first former president to be convicted of a crime.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

Trump’s lawyers argue that prosecutors improperly admitted evidence of Trump’s official actions during the trial. They also argue that, as president-elect, Trump is immune from prosecution during the period between his election victory in November and his inauguration.

‘ONLY ONE PRESIDENT’

In their filing to the Supreme Court on Thursday, New York prosecutors said that “all of the evidence challenged by the defendant in his post-trial brief either involved off-the-record conduct not subject to any immunity or is a matter of public record, i.e. not subject to preclusion, as the trial court correctly determined.”

As for Trump’s argument that he is immune as president-elect, prosecutors said this “extraordinary immunity claim is not supported by any decision of any court.”

“It is an axiom that there is only one president at a given moment,” they added.

In a July 6-3 ruling by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court said the immunity of former presidents is “absolute” given their “fundamental constitutional powers” and that a former president has “at least presumptive immunity” for “acted outside the scope of his official responsibility,” meaning prosecutors face a high legal bar to overcome that presumption.

Merchan rejected Trump’s immunity argument in December, finding that the cover-up case dealt with Trump’s personal conduct, not his official acts as president.

In urging the judges to halt Trump’s sentencing, his lawyers argued that as president-elect, Trump was immune from prosecution “during the brief but crucial period” between his election victory in November and his inauguration.

Ahead of last year’s election, the Supreme Court in August rejected a request by Missouri’s Republican attorney general to stay Trump’s sentencing.