Trump asks US Supreme Court to halt sentencing in New York embezzlement case | News about Donald Trump
The newly elected president will be sentenced in a criminal trial in New York 10 days before the start of his second term.
The newly elected president of the United States, Donald Trump, asked the Supreme Court to pause the proceedings in his New York criminal case involving kickbacks to an adult film star.
The court filing released Wednesday comes just two days before Trump’s sentencing in the case.
Trump was convicted last May of 34 counts of falsifying business records, which prosecutors said Trump did in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election to cover up a potentially politically damaging affair.
Last week, Judge Juan Merchan ordered the sentencing to take place on Friday, just 10 days before Trump takes office.
In a filing with the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers requested an immediate stay of sentencing “to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operation of the federal government.”
Such a delay would allow time for Trump’s appeal of the case to be launched. The Supreme Court ordered the prosecutors to respond to the request by Thursday.
Trump’s lawyers argued that last year’s Supreme Court ruling that approved the presidents broad immunity from prosecution means that some of the evidence should not have been presented in the case.
They asked for the conviction to be overturned.
The appeal to the Supreme Court – the highest court in the US, dominated by a 6-3 conservative supermajority, including three Trump appointees – comes after two lower courts rejected Trump’s request for a stay.
A historical belief
The case in New York made Trump the first former president in US history to be indicted. He is set to re-enter office as the first president who was also a convicted felon.
Trump has also been criminally indicted in three other cases: one federal case related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election; one federal case related to the hiding and hoarding of classified White House documents; and one case in Georgia related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 elections there.
However, Trump’s election victory served as probable passing bell for two federal cases, with a longstanding Justice Department policy preventing the prosecution of sitting presidents.
US special prosecutor Jack Smith decided to dismiss both cases after Trump’s victory.
The future of the case in Georgia is also uncertain, with the state’s appeals court recently removing the lead prosecutor. While the state case is not subject to the same restrictions as the federal case, it is considered unlikely to move forward while Trump is in office.
A Trump victory in the 2024 election also raised troubling questions about how it would affect his sentence in New York.
However, in court filings, Judge Merchan signaled that he would sentence Trump to an “unconditional release,” meaning his conviction would stand but he would not face jail time, fines or probation.
