US President-elect Donald Trump thanks President Joe Biden for pledging a smooth transfer of power as the victorious Republican makes a historic return visit to the White House.
Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to delay his sentencing in the hush money case.
The court’s decision could test the ruling on immunity for former Presidents.
Justice Juan Merchan plans an ‘unconditional discharge’, with no jail or probation for Trump.
President-elect Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to delay his planned sentencing Friday in his criminal hush money case, setting up a potential test of the high court’s ruling to extend broad immunity from prosecution to former presidents.
Ten days before his inauguration, Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made to an adult film actor during the 2016 election. He has tried repeatedly to challenge the validity of his conviction and postpone sentencing, saying it will interfere with his presidential transition.
The trial judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, has said he does not plan to sentence Trump to jail time or probation. But the sentencing would complete the process of Trump being formally classified as a felon – the first former President or President-elect convicted of criminal wrongdoing.
In their petition late on Tuesday, Trump’s attorneys told the Supreme Court that the President-elect is immune from criminal proceedings and that his sentencing should be postponed while his appeals continue to “prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency and the operations of the federal government”.
The Supreme Court asked prosecutors in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to respond to Trump’s request by Thursday morning, with Trump’s sentencing hearing scheduled for Friday at 9.30am.
The justices could act at any time after the state’s response is filed. Trump would need the votes of at least five of the nine justices to postpone his sentencing.
Justice Merchan has rejected the President-elect’s immunity claims. A state appeals court judge on Tuesday denied Trump’s request to stay the sentencing, signalling that judge’s belief that Trump has a low chance of succeeding when the immunity claim is fully evaluated by the appeals court.
Donald Trump with porn star Stormy Daniels in 2006. Photo / Supplied
In that ruling, the court’s conservative majority also barred prosecutors from presenting immunised official acts as evidence. Trump’s team said that decision means New York prosecutors should not have been allowed to use evidence at trial of Trump’s actions taken while in office, including the testimony of close White House advisers.
Justice Merchan has repeatedly ruled that the hush money case was based on personal conduct, not Trump’s official duties during his first term, and that the federal immunity doctrine does not apply.
Trump’s lawyer D. John Sauer told the justices that upon Trump’s return to the White House on January 20, “he will be completely immune from all criminal process, state or federal”. That immunity, he said, should be extended to the transition period while Trump “engages in the extraordinarily demanding task of preparing to assume the Executive power of the United States”.
“The prospect of imposing sentence on President Trump just before he assumes Office as the 47th President raises the spectre of other possible restrictions on liberty, such as travel, reporting requirements, registration, probationary requirements, and others-all of which would be constitutionally intolerable under the doctrine of presidential immunity,” Sauer told the court.
The Supreme Court’s decision in July left open the possibility that former Presidents can be prosecuted for private conduct. The ruling was written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts jnr and joined by all three of Trump’s nominees on the bench.
United States Supreme Court Chief Justice, John G Roberts Jr, during his appearance at a Q & A session at Victoria University in Wellington in 2017. Photo / Mark Mitchell
If the justices agree to delay Trump’s sentencing until after he takes office, it could effectively shut down what little remains of the four criminal cases against Trump that until recently were making their way through the courts.
Special counsel Jack Smith has dismissed Trump as a party in cases charging him in Florida with mishandling classified documents and in DC with trying to block the results of the 2020 election. A Georgia appeals court last month disqualified the state prosecutor leading the case accusing Trump of conspiring in that state to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden.
Trump’s request to the Supreme Court was submitted late on Tuesday by a trio of lawyers the President-elect has said he intends to nominate to fill high-level Justice Department positions in his new administration: Todd Blanche as Deputy Attorney-General, Emil Bove as principal associate Deputy Attorney-General, and Sauer as Solicitor-General, the administration’s top advocate at the Supreme Court.
The petition said Trump will also ask the New York Court of Appeals to halt his planned sentencing.
In his ruling last week, Justice Merchan wrote that he plans to order an “unconditional discharge” for Trump, a designation in New York criminal courts for a non-jail and non-probation sentence that carries no other obligations.
Justice Merchan said the current sentencing schedule was requested by Trump, who previously asked for the hearing to be postponed until after the election. After making that request, the judge said Trump could not now credibly say that winning the election makes him immune from sentencing.
“That he would become the ‘President-elect’ and be required to assume all the responsibilities that come with the transition were entirely anticipated,” Justice Merchan wrote.
He also emphasised that Trump’s presidential immunity claims have no relevance to the hush money charges, which the judge said were unrelated to Trump’s official duties as President.
Trump’s conviction stems from efforts to conceal a payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump a decade before. Trump denies the encounter ever happened. Prosecutors said the Daniels payment – made through an intermediary – should have been reported to campaign finance regulators and was illegally concealed by classifying the reimbursement payments as a legal expense.
“Binding precedent does not provide that an individual, upon becoming President, can retroactively dismiss or vacate prior criminal acts nor does it grant blanket Presidential-elect immunity,” Justice Merchan wrote.
A former Trump campaign adviser said Trump is determined to try to stop the sentencing – even though it will carry no real punishment, and even though his other criminal cases are all dismissed or indefinitely delayed – because he wants a clean slate.
“He doesn’t care that it appears he’s won everything,” said the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the President-elect’s mindset.
“From his standpoint it doesn’t matter that there’s no criminal consequences, he wants his name cleared.”
