The US supreme court on Thursday declined to delay Donald Trump’s upcoming sentencing in his hush-money case.
Trump had asked the US’s highest legal body to call off Friday’s sentencing after New York courts refused to postpone it.
Judge Juan Merchan presided over Trump’s trial and conviction last May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the criminal hush-money scheme designed to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won by beating the Democrats’ Hillary Clinton.
The supreme court’s nine justices on Thursday voted by five to four to deny the president-elect’s last-minute bid to prevent his sentencing, which is scheduled for Friday at 9.30am local time in New York state court in Manhattan.
The chief justice, John Roberts, and fellow conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal-leaning justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in the court’s majority in denying Trump’s request.
Trump had originally pleaded not guilty in the case, where the court heard that he paid off adult film actor Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election to stop her revealing an alleged affair with him years before, and then tried to disguise the payment.
Merchan has indicated he will not impose jail time, fines or probation, but Trump’s lawyers argued a felony conviction would still have intolerable side-effects, including distracting him as he prepares to take office in just over a week’s time.
The supreme court is dominated by conservative justices, three of which were appointed by Trump during his first term as president. Trump’s emergency motion to the court was submitted to Sotomayor, who hears emergency appeals from New York.
In issuing its decision, a brief order from the court late on Thursday gave two reasons, saying: “First, the alleged evidentiary violations at president-elect Trump’s state-court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal.”
It added: “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.”
Merchan said last week that he was not inclined to sentence Trump to prison and the likelihood is that he will be granted an unconditional discharge. This means the guilty judgment remains on Trump’s record and he will remain a felon, but will avoid punishment in the form of custody, a fine or probation.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh said they would have granted Trump’s request.
Trump presses on with a state court appeal to resolve questions of presidential immunity following the supreme court’s highly controversial ruling last July granting former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts – the scope of which is open to legal interpretation.
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office argued in a filing that Trump was not entitled to the intervention by the supreme court.
Bragg’s office had originally charged Trump in relation to falsely recording as “legal expenses” reimbursements he made to his former lawyer Michael Cohen after Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 for her silence.
The prosecution alleged the falsifications were made to conceal Trump’s violation of New York state election law, which makes it a crime to promote the election of any person to office through unlawful means.
Prosecutors said those unlawful means were the $130,000 paid to Daniels because it was essentially an illegal campaign contribution, done for the benefit of Trump’s election effort and exceeded the legal $2,700 individual contribution cap.
Trump is the only sitting or former US president to be convicted of a crime.
Reuters contributed reporting
