Former US President Donald Trump speaks to the press on arrival at his trial for allegedly overlaying up hush cash funds linked to extramarital affairs, at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, on May 16, 2024.
Angela Weiss | Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday requested the Supreme Court to dam felony proceedings in his hush cash case in New York, with a sentencing listening to scheduled for Friday.
The court docket has requested New York prosecutors to reply to Trump’s request by Thursday morning, giving the justices time to behave earlier than the sentencing continuing.
“This Court ought to enter a right away keep of additional proceedings within the New York trial court docket to forestall grave injustice and hurt to the establishment of the Presidency and the operations of the federal authorities,” Trump’s legal professionals wrote within the new submitting.
They argue that the case shouldn’t go ahead as a result of Trump, who was president on the time of the alleged offenses, was protected by presidential immunity, as acknowledged by the Supreme Court earlier this 12 months.
“The Supreme Court’s historic determination on Immunity, the Constitution, and established authorized precedent mandate that this meritless hoax be instantly dismissed,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung mentioned in a press release.
On Tuesday, a New York appeals court docket choose declined to dam the sentencing.
Trump was convicted in May of falsifying data associated to hush cash that his then-attorney Michael Cohen paid grownup movie star Stormy Daniels within the closing days of the 2016 presidential election. Daniels testified she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, a declare he has denied.
Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial, initially postponed Trump’s scheduled sentencing in July within the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling setting a brand new standard for presidential immunity that month.
But Merchan later concluded Trump doesn’t have immunity till he’s sworn in as president. He then directed Trump’s sentencing on 34 felony counts of falsifying enterprise data to happen Friday morning.
The Supreme Court’s contentious presidential immunity ruling got here within the separate case by which Trump was charged with looking for to overturn the 2020 presidential election outcomes. With Trump about to grow to be president once more, that case has now been dropped.
Trump’s Supreme Court request was filed by lawyer D. John Sauer, who the president-election intends to nominate as solicitor normal, his administration’s high courtroom advocate. Another Trump lawyer listed on the submitting, Todd Blanche, is Trump’s decide to be deputy lawyer normal.
