New York’s highest court on Thursday rejected President-elect Donald Trump’s bid to suspend his sentence on Friday, and prosecutors urged the U.S. Supreme Court to do the same.
In a brief letter to Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, the chief clerk of the New York Court of Appeals said his proposed order suspending Trump’s sentence had been reviewed by a judge “who refused to sign the order.”
This was Trump’s third denial this week. A motion to block the proceedings is still pending in the Supreme Court.
In a filing Thursday, prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office urged the conservative high court, which includes three Trump-appointed judges, to allow the proceedings to move forward.
Trump wants to “take the extraordinary step of intervening in a pending state criminal trial to prevent the scheduled sentencing, before the trial court has rendered final sentencing and before any direct appellate review of the defendant’s conviction. “There is no basis.” for such intervention,” the district attorney’s filing said.
Trump responded in a filing Thursday night that the high court has the authority to act and that the district attorney was downplaying “the importance of the presidential transition and the need for an energetic executive.”
In a filing Wednesday, Trump’s lawyers argued that the Supreme Court needed to halt his sentencing for felony falsification of business records to “prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government.”
They argue that the case should not move forward because Trump’s actions were protected by presidential immunity since he was president at the time of the refund payments in question.
The district attorney’s office maintains that Trump’s conduct in the case, where he was accused of causing the falsification of records to cover up his personal attorney’s payment of money to a porn star in the final days of the 2016 presidential election, had to do with “unofficial acts” that were not covered by presidential immunity.
Trump had denied actress Stormy Daniels’ account of the sexual encounter the two had. He has also tried to delay the sentencing, arguing that it should not proceed because he is already protected by presidential immunity given his status as president-elect.
The judge presiding over the case, Juan Merchán, denied his request for a stay on Monday, and the New York state Appellate Division, a mid-level appeals court, rejected Trump’s attempt to stop the sentence on Tuesday.
Merchan wrote in a decision last week that he intends to sentence Trump to unconditional release, a type of sentence that would maintain the conviction but carry no other sanctions.
Laura Hurley, Laura Jarrett and Daniel Barnes contributed.
