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President-elect Donald Trump on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024 (NBC News/YouTube).
New York’s highest court has rejected Donald Trump’s latest bid to halt Friday’s sentencing hearing in the criminal hush-money case that saw him convicted on 34 felony charges.
The New York Court of Appeals’ denial of the request is the latest in a string of legal losses for the president-elect this week as he continues his efforts to have the case dismissed and his conviction vacated.
In a 29-page emergency application filed Wednesday, Trump asked the court to issue an “immediate stay” of the criminal proceedings as he sought reversal of Acting Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan’s “erroneous rulings wrongly denying President Trump’s claims of Presidential immunity.”
Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche wrote that he was challenging Merchan’s Dec. 16 order rejecting Trump’s claim of “presidential immunity based on evidentiary use of official acts,” as well as Merchan’s Jan. 3 order denying Trump’s motion to dismiss based on his “claim of sitting-presidential immunity as extended into the transitional period while Trump is President-elect.”
The attorney further claimed that filing the motion with the appeals court should trigger an immediate and automatic stay of proceedings at the trial court, while also using the opportunity to malign Merchan, prosecutors, and Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen for their roles Trump’s convictions.
“As discussed herein, the commencement of appellate proceedings seeking interlocutory review of these claims of Presidential immunity immediately causes an automatic stay of proceedings in the Supreme Court under Trump v. United States and related case law,” the filing states. “This appellate proceeding should result in a dismissal of this politically motivated prosecution that was flawed from the very beginning, centered around the wrongful actions and false claims of a disgraced, disbarred serial-liar former attorney, violated President Trump’s due process rights, and had no merit.”
In what appears to be a novel argument for the president-elect, Trump also asserted that Merchan’s decision to schedule the sentencing hearing for Jan. 10, 2025, infringed on Trump’s constitutional rights.
“[The] Supreme Court’s unconstitutional decision to set sentencing for January 10, 2025, mere days before President Trump’s inauguration to serve a second term as President of the United States, threatens irreparable harm and deprivation of President Trump’s constitutional rights,” Blanche wrote in the filing.
Blanche made the same argument during Tuesday’s oral arguments before New York First Department Court of Appeals Associate Justice Ellen Gesmer, who pointed out that Merchan had repeatedly delayed Trump’s sentencing hearing at Trump’s own request. Gesmer quickly rejected Trump’s request to stay the proceedings.
Trump also filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to have the criminal proceedings delayed indefinitely. Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office were ordered to respond to Trump’s filing by 10 a.m. on Thursday.
