New York’s highest court declined to block Donald Trump’s upcoming sentencing in his hush-money case on Thursday, leaving the US supreme court as the president-elect’s likely last option to prevent the hearing from taking place on Friday.
One judge on the New York court of appeals issued a brief order declining to grant a hearing to Trump’s legal team.
“Your proposed order to show cause was reviewed by Judge Rivera, who declined to sign the order,” the court’s chief clerk wrote to Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s lawyers. “As a result of the Judge’s determination, no motion is pending in the above title at the Court of Appeals.”
The news comes less than a week after the judge who presided over Trump’s trial, Juan Merchan, denied the president-elect’s motion to dismiss the case. Trump’s legal team had argued that the presidential transition process should be allowed to continue without the disruption of a criminal sentencing hearing, but Merchan disputed that logic.
“Finding no legal impediment to sentencing and recognizing that Presidential immunity will likely attach once Defendant takes his Oath of Office, it is incumbent upon this Court to set this matter down for the imposition of sentence prior to January 20, 2025,” Merchan wrote in his decision. “It is this Court’s firm belief that only by bringing finality to this matter will all [parties’] interests be served.”
Merchan has set the sentencing for Friday, although he signaled in his ruling last week that he was not inclined to jail Trump given the extraordinary conditions of the president-elect’s imminent inauguration.
The supreme court, where conservatives hold a six-three majority, now represents Trump’s last chance to avoid the sentencing. If the court does not intervene, the sentencing hearing will begin at 9.30am ET on Friday in Manhattan.
The hearing would conclude a years-long investigation into allegations that Trump paid hush money to an adult-film actor named Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had an extramarital affair with Trump, in an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Last May, a New York jury convicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, making him the first former US president convicted of felony crimes.
The president-elect has consistently denied wrongdoing in the case and has claimed, without evidence, that the conviction is a result of a political “witch-hunt”.
