President-elect Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to call off Friday’s sentencing in his hush money case in New York. Trump’s lawyers turned to the nation’s highest court on Wednesday after New York courts refused to postpone the sentencing by Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial and conviction last May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump has denied wrongdoing. Prosecutors were expected to file a response by Thursday morning. Trump’s team sought an immediate stay of the scheduled sentencing, saying it would wrongly restrict him as he prepares to take office.

While Merchan has indicated he will not impose jail time, fines or probation, Trump’s lawyers argued a felony conviction would still have intolerable side effects. The sentencing should be delayed as he appeals the conviction to “prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government,” they argued. The emergency motion is from lawyers John Sauer, Trump’s pick for solicitor general, who represents the government before the high court, and Todd Blanche, in line to be the second-ranking official at the Justice Department.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, meanwhile, said it will respond in court papers. The emergency motion was submitted to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who hears appeals from New York. Trump’s convictions arose from what prosecutors said was an attempt to cover up a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. He denies it.

The Supreme Court’s immunity opinion came in a separate election interference case against him, but Trump’s lawyers say it means some of the evidence used against him in his hush money trial should have been shielded by presidential immunity. That includes testimony from some White House aides and social media posts made while he was in office. Merchan has disagreed, finding they would qualify as personal business. The Supreme Court’s immunity decision was largely about official acts of presidents while in office.

New York's Highest Appeals Court Declines To Block Trump's Sentencing In Hush Money Case

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York’s highest court on Thursday declined to block Donald Trump’s upcoming sentencing in his hush money case, leaving the U.S. Supreme Court as the president-elect’s likely last option to prevent the hearing from taking place Friday.

One judge of the New York Court of Appeals issued a brief order declining to grant a hearing to Trump’s legal team.

Trump has asked the Supreme Court to call off Friday’s sentencing. His lawyers turned to the nation’s highest court Wednesday after New York courts refused to postpone the sentencing by Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial and conviction last May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump has denied wrongdoing.

In a filing to the top New York court, Trump’s attorneys had said Merchan and the state’s mid-level appellate court both “erroneously failed” to stop the sentencing, arguing that the Constitution requires an automatic pause as they appeal and that the sentencing would disrupt the Republican’s presidential transition as he prepares to return to the White House on Jan. 20.

Prosecutors pushed back, saying there’s no reason for the high court to take the “extraordinary step” of entering a state case to halt a sentencing that’s been delayed at Trump’s request.

“There is a compelling public interest in proceeding to sentencing,” Manhattan prosecutors wrote. “Defendant has provided no record support for his claim that his duties as President-elect foreclose him from virtually attending a sentencing that will likely take no more than an hour.”

While Merchan has indicated he will not impose jail time, fines or probation, Trump’s lawyers argued a felony conviction would still have intolerable side effects, including distracting him as he prepares to take office.

Trump’s attorney D. John Sauer called the case politically motivated and said sentencing now would be a “grave injustice.” Sauer is also Trump’s pick to be solicitor general, who represents the government before the high court.

The emergency motion to the U.S. Supreme Court was submitted to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who hears emergency appeals from New York.

Trump’s attorneys also argue that evidence used in the Manhattan trial violated last summer’s Supreme Court ruling giving Trump broad immunity from prosecution over acts he took as president. At the least, they have said, the sentencing should be delayed while their appeals play out on the immunity issue.

Judges in New York have found that Trump’s convictions related to personal matters rather than the official presidential at the core of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Prosecutors argue Trump’s claims aren’t strong enough to overturn his conviction and his appeal shouldn’t freeze the case because it’s about evidence rather than the core charges.

TRUMP, DONALD J. V. NEW YORK, ET AL. The application for stay presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court is denied for, inter alia, the following reasons. First, the alleged evidentiary violations at President-Elect Trump’s state-court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal. Second, the burden that sentencing will impose on the President-Elect’s responsibilities is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court’s stated intent to impose a sentence of “unconditional discharge” after a brief virtual hearing. Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch, and Justice Kavanaugh would grant the application.

President-elect Donald Trump received a sentence of unconditional discharge — or effectively no punishment — at a Friday hearing with New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, which puts an end to his hush money trial more than seven months after his unprecedented conviction.

Trump appeared in court on a video feed from Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club, wearing a red and white striped tie and a frown. He was seated alongside his attorney Todd Blanche, with U.S. flags in the background.

Trump initially allowed Blanche to speak for him, averting his eyes from the camera. But he took the opportunity to address the court when Merchan offered it to him.

“This has been a very terrible experience. I think it’s been a tremendous setback for New York and the New York court system,” Trump said. “It was done to damage my reputation so I’d lose the election, and obviously it didn’t work.”

He added that he was “totally innocent” and “did nothing wrong.”

The extraordinary case reached a high-water mark in May last year, when a panel of a dozen New Yorkers found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts and made him the first convicted felon to have served as president.

Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida, ordered the Justice Department on Tuesday to temporarily withhold from the American public special counsel Jack Smith's final report on his investigations into the president-elect, despite questions about her authority to do so.

Cannon's order came in response to a Monday request by President-elect Donald Trump's longtime valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, who are facing charges in a classified documents case brought by Smith. Trump was also charged in the classified documents probe, but Smith dropped the case against the Republican leader after he won the 2024 presidential election.

In their filing on Monday, Nauta and De Oliveira's attorneys called on Cannon to bar the release of Smith's final report, even though the classified documents case is currently before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta—not Cannon's court. The Justice Department is appealing Cannon's decision last summer to dismiss the classified documents case as the agency pursues charges against Nauta and De Oliveira.

Cannon wrote in her order Tuesday that Attorney General Merrick Garland, Smith, and other Justice Department employees are enjoined from "releasing, sharing, or transmitting" Smith's final report or "any drafts of such report" outside the DOJ. The judge said her order would remain in effect until the 11th Circuit rules on Nauta and De Oliveira's motion to prohibit the release of Smith's report.

Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, said in an appearance on MSNBC that she doesn't believe Cannon has "any jurisdiction" over decisions surrounding Smith's report.

"But delay is the name of the game here," she added. "If they can just stop the clock until January 20th, then... the attorney general will be a Trump appointee and they can kill the whole thing and say, 'There's no report to disclose.' So that's the goal here."

Speaking to reporters Tuesday just ahead of Cannon's order, Trump claimed he didn't "know" the Florida judge—despite appointing her—but praised her as "brilliant."

Smith said in a filing earlier Tuesday that his office is still "working to finalize" the report on his investigations into Trump's hoarding of classified documents and efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election. By law, special counsels are required to submit a final report to the attorney general, who has the authority to decide whether to make the findings available to the public.

Smith said in his filing that he would not transmit his report to Garland before 1:00 pm on Tuesday, and that the attorney general would not release the findings before the morning of January 10—if at all. It's unclear how Cannon's order will impact Smith's timeline.

Trump's lawyers have demanded that Garland withhold Smith's report entirely, claiming in a letter to the attorney general on Monday that making it public would "violate the Presidential Transition Act and the presidential immunity doctrine."

In their letter to Garland, Trump's attorneys—who have reviewed Smith's confidential report in recent days—revealed that the first volume of the document states that the president-elect "engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort" and was "the head of the criminal conspiracies" surrounding the 2020 election.