Donald Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to intervene in his criminal hush money case and stop his sentencing from going ahead on Friday, comparing the president-elect’s experience with the justice system to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
The eleventh-hour request to the nation’s high court came a day after Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, failed to convince a New York appeals court to cancel the proceeding and let Trump fight rulings by the trial court judge, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.
It asks the Supreme Court to resolve whether Trump is entitled to a pause in the proceedings, whether the admission of evidence at his trial violated the doctrine of presidential immunity, and whether a president-elect has the same immunity from prosecution as a sitting president.
“President Trump is already suffering grave irreparable injury from the disruption and distraction that the trial court abruptly inflicted by suddenly scheduling a sentencing hearing for the President-Elect of the United States, on five days’ notice, at the apex of the Presidential transition,” reads the emergency petition.
“These harms continue to increase as the New York courts deny relief and the sentencing hearing approaches.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, assigned to emergency requests filed in New York, asked the Manhattan district attorney’s office to respond to the request by Thursday at 10 a.m.
Trump’s application was filed by his lawyers, John Sauer and Blanche, who he’s picked to serve in top roles at the Department of Justice. They indicated to the court that they’d first sought a pause of the sentencing from New York’s Court of Appeals, a step above the midlevel appeals court that denied Trump’s delay bid Tuesday. However, those papers were not filed until around 4 p.m., according to an official from New York’s highest court.
The application argues that Merchan wrongly refused to recognize Trump’s immunity by allowing specific evidence at his trial and trying to sentence him in his transition period.
Citing the 1865 children’s novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Sauer and Blanche wrote, “The New York courts’ insistence on holding a criminal sentencing before President Trump’s appeals on immunity are resolved reflects the justice of the Queen of Hearts: ‘Sentence first — verdict afterwards.’”
Merchan on Friday unexpectedly scheduled Trump’s sentencing for 10 days before his inauguration. He said that Trump could appear by video and that he was inclined to sentence him to an unconditional discharge, meaning he would not face jail time, fines, or probation. It is virtually unheard of for someone found guilty of felonies in Manhattan to see no punishment at all.
The ruling further denied Trump’s request to vacate the jury’s guilty verdict and dismiss the underlying indictment that argued the case should be thrown out in light of his election victory and the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity. Merchan found Trump wasn’t protected by presidential immunity as president-elect.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority, including three Trump-appointed justices, handed down the immunity decision in July, a month after Trump was found guilty. It determined that presidents are mostly shielded from criminal liability for acts they carry out during their official duties. In her dissent, Sotomayor said it meant that “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
In December, Merchan found that evidence at trial, including testimony by Trump’s former White House communications director, Hope Hicks, about her private conversations with Trump and threatening tweets Trump directed at his ex-fixer Michael Cohen on his presidential Twitter account, was not barred by the immunity ruling as they related to Trump’s unofficial conduct.
Should the Supreme Court delay Trump’s sentencing any longer than Jan. 20, when he takes office, it’s unlikely his conviction will be finalized before his second term concludes.
In a statement, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said, “The American People elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate that demands an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and all of the remaining Witch Hunts.”
A spokeswoman for the Manhattan DA told the Daily News prosecutors would respond in court papers.
A jury on May 30 found Trump, 78, guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records stemming from a scheme to hide embarrassing details about his past from voters in 2016 that violated New York election law.
The case centered on payments he made to Cohen during his first year in the White House, which reimbursed his longtime former fixer for paying off porn star Stormy Daniels to silence her claims of a sordid sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.
The Manhattan case was the only one of four brought against Trump after his first term that made it before a jury. As the charges are state-level, he cannot pardon himself.
