A lawyer for President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday failed to convince a New York appeals court to stop his sentencing from going ahead this week amid an all-out effort to close the book on his criminal hush money case before he takes office.
Associate Justice Ellen Gesmer shot down Trump’s emergency request to halt his sentencing from proceeding Friday at 9:30 a.m. — 10 days before he moves into the White House — after briefly hearing from his attorney Todd Blanche and the Manhattan district attorney’s chief of appeals, Steven Wu.
Blanche argued that the sentencing should be called off as Trump appeals a set of rulings by the trial court judge, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.
Last week, Merchan rejected Trump’s bid to get the case thrown out based partly on the position that the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling protected him as president-elect. The July decision by the nation’s high court found that a president is broadly shielded from criminal prosecution for acts they carry out in their official duties.
Gesmer appeared dubious about the position, asking Blanche if he could point to any case law showing that a president-in-waiting is afforded such protections.
“There has never been a case like this before, so no,” Blanche answered.
Blanche, who Trump has tapped to be second-in-command at the Department of Justice, argued that the sentencing would be an extraordinary imposition for Trump as he prepares to become president again. Gesmer interrupted him to say Merchan “would have been happy to hold this sentencing back in July.”
Trump’s legal team, which incessantly sought to delay the case from the moment of its inception, convinced Merchan to reschedule the sentencing three times after he was found guilty last spring.
In opposing Trump’s Tuesday request, Wu from the DA’s office said the claim that a president-elect has presidential immunity was inconsistent with the reality that there can only be one sitting president.
“The claim is so baseless that there is no support for an automatic stay here,” Wu said.
As to the claim that the sentencing would impair Trump’s ability to prepare for his presidency and be detrimental to the nation’s interests, Wu said Merchan had considered those factors. In his decision on Friday, Merchan said he wouldn’t impose any form of punishment and would allow Trump to appear remotely, Wu noted. Trump has indicated he’ll attend virtually if it goes ahead.
“If sentencing is to happen at all, now is the time for it to happen here,” Wu said.
In a filing earlier Tuesday coinciding with the emergency request, Trump asked the mid-level appeals court to reverse Merchan’s recent rulings that kept the guilty verdict intact. It came a day after Merchan refused to call off Trump’s sentencing, which he unexpectedly scheduled last week in one of the rulings Trump is appealing.
Trump’s filing to the 1st Department, Appellate Division appeals court said it sought “to redress the serious and continuing infringement on his Presidential immunity from criminal process that he holds as the 45th and soon-to-be 47th President of the United States of America.”
In his Friday ruling, Merchan decided that discarding the jury’s guilty verdicts against Trump would cause “immeasurable” harm to the nation’s confidence in the law and that Trump did not have immunity as the president-elect. In December, he found that immunity protections didn’t apply to evidence in the case.
The verdict delivered by 12 Manhattan residents 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 the electorate in 2016.
The case centered on payments he made to Michael Cohen after his first presidential term began, which reimbursed his longtime former fixer for paying off porn star Stormy Daniels in the leadup to the election. Trial evidence showed Daniels was one of three hush money recipients.
The Manhattan criminal case was the only one of four brought against Trump after his first term that made it before a jury. It set him up to become the first convicted felon to serve as U.S. president. As the charges are state-level, he cannot pardon himself. He is expected to appeal his conviction if his sentencing goes ahead.
Trump may appeal Tuesday’s ruling to New York’s Court of Appeals, target a bid to halt the sentencing to a federal appeals court, and potentially ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
A spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case, declined to comment. Blanche did not speak to reporters after the hearing.
