President-elect Donald Trump could be sentenced in his New York hush money case on Friday, according to a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling.
The Supreme Court denied Trump’s emergency request to postpone the proceedings on Thursday, setting the stage for his sentencing just days before he is inaugurated for a second term on January 20.
Four conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh — said they would have granted Trump’s request.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberals in opposing Trump.
Judge Juan Merchan, the New York judge who presided over Trump’s trial, had scheduled sentencing for Friday morning, but has indicated that Trump will not face any penalties or prison time.
The sentencing hearing is scheduled for Friday, at 9:30 a.m. According to a source familiar with the plans, Trump will participate in the proceedings virtually from Mar-a-Lago.
In a brief, one-paragraph statement, the court stated that some of Trump’s concerns could be addressed “in the ordinary course of appeal.”
The court also reasoned that the burden sentencing would place on Trump’s responsibilities is “relatively insubstantial” given the trial court’s stated intent to impose no penalty.
The president-elect’s request to the US Supreme Court was an extraordinary appeal because the justices rarely take up a state criminal case before exhausting all state court appeals.
Trump’s underlying challenge to his conviction remains pending, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg argued that the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction to even consider the emergency request to delay sentencing.
In May, Trump was convicted of falsifying business records to reimburse his then-lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 hush money payment made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels to prevent her from disclosing an alleged affair before the 2016 election. (Trump denied the affair.)
The incoming president, who will be inaugurated in less than two weeks, is challenging his conviction, arguing that it should be overturned because a conservative majority of the Supreme Court ruled in July that former presidents have broad immunity for official actions.
Part of Trump’s argument was that his trial included evidence of official actions from his time in office that, under the Supreme Court’s immunity decision, would normally be barred from reaching a jury. Prosecutors argued that those concerns could be resolved on appeal.
Merchan rejected that argument in December, ruling that the evidence presented by the Manhattan district attorney’s office had no bearing on Trump’s official conduct as president.
Trump’s attorneys told the Supreme Court that dealing with the sentencing would detract from his transition to power and could jeopardize national security.
“Defending criminal litigation at all stages – especially, as here, defending a criminal sentencing – is uniquely taxing and burdensome to a criminal defendant,” the justices were told by Trump’s attorneys.
“President Trump is currently engaged in the most crucial and sensitive tasks of preparing to assume the executive power in less than two weeks, all of which are essential to the United States’ national security and vital interests,” according to their letter.
In their own filing on Thursday, New York prosecutors shot down that argument.
“There is a compelling public interest in proceeding with sentencing,” Bragg told the Supreme Court.
“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.”
In a final filing Thursday, Trump argued that the case involved “great national importance” and that “the constitutional structure, and the nation” would be “irreparably harmed by letting the sentencing go forward.”
Alito recusal calls
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court became embroiled in another ethics controversy after Trump and Alito spoke on the phone this week, just before Trump filed his appeal.
On Thursday, key congressional Democrats urged Alito to recuse himself from the sentencing case, citing the justice’s phone call with the president-elect to discuss one of his former clerks working for the incoming administration.
“Justice Alito’s decision to have a personal phone call with President Trump — who obviously has an active and deeply personal matter before the court — makes clear that he fundamentally misunderstands the basic requirements of judicial ethics or, more likely, believes himself to be above judicial ethics altogether,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, who represents Maryland.
Justices can decide whether recusal is warranted, but they rarely do.
Alito stated that the sentencing dispute was not discussed during their conversation.
The two also did not discuss “any other matter that is pending or might in the future come before the Supreme Court, or any past Supreme Court decisions involving the President-elect,” Alito said in a statement Wednesday.
