New York appellate court denies Trump bid to halt hush money sentencing

(Reuters) – A New York appellate court on Tuesday denied President-elect Donald Trump‘s bid to halt sentencing set for Friday for his conviction on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star.

Associate Justice Ellen Gesmer of the Appellate Division, a mid-level state appeals court, made the decision after holding a hearing on Trump’s last-ditch effort to block the trial judge’s ruling on Monday to proceed with the sentencing, scheduled for 10 days before his inauguration.

In his Monday ruling, Justice Juan Merchan rejected a request from Trump’s lawyers to delay the sentencing while they appealed two of the judge’s previous rulings upholding the Manhattan jury’s May guilty verdict on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The judge called Trump’s delay request mostly “a repetition of the arguments he has raised numerous times in the past.”

In scheduling Trump’s sentencing for Friday, Merchan said he was not inclined to send Trump to prison. The judge said a sentence of unconditional discharge, effectively putting a judgment of guilt on his record without a fine or probation, would be the most practical approach given Trump’s looming return to the presidency.

In the half-hour hearing over Trump’s request for a delay on Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, Gesmer pressed Trump lawyer Todd Blanche on his argument that a sitting president’s immunity from prosecution extends to the transition period between winning the election and inauguration.

“Do you have any support for the notion that presidential immunity extends to a president elect?” Gesmer asked.

Blanche replied, “There has never been a case like this before, so no.”

But Blanche raised the prospect of Justice Juan Merchan, the trial judge, imposing a prison sentence that extended past the Jan. 20 inauguration despite the judge’s indication that he would not do so.

“I don’t find that hypothetical very helpful,” Gesmer said, asking Blanche to focus on his arguments related to presidential immunity.

Gesmer asked a lawyer for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which brought the case, to address Trump’s argument that the sentencing would interfere with the presidential transition.

Steven Wu, the state lawyer, said Merchan had addressed those issues by scheduling sentencing before the inauguration, by allowing Trump to appear virtually and by indicating he would not send Trump to prison.

Wu also noted that the sentencing had initially been scheduled for July had been delayed multiple times at Trump’s request, arguing it was “disingenuous” for Trump to now claim the timing of sentencing was impractical. Gesmer appeared to agree.

“If he was concerned about this issue he could’ve easily had this proceeding go forward in July, in September,” Gesmer said.

In a one-line written decision issued about a half hour after the hearing ended, Gesmer wrote, “After consideration of the papers submitted and the extensive oral argument, (Trump’s) application for an interim stay is denied.”

‘I DID NOTHING WRONG’

In an apparent reference to Merchan, Trump said a “crooked judge” in New York was complicating a smooth transition.

“Remember, this is a man that said he wants the transition to be smooth,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday before the hearing began. “Well, you don’t do the kind of things. You don’t have a judge working real hard to try and embarrass you, because I did nothing wrong.”

The case stemmed from a $130,000 payment that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she said she had a decade earlier with Trump, who denies it. Trump, a Republican, defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in that election.

Trump has argued that Bragg, a Democrat, brought the case to harm his 2024 election bid. Bragg has said that his office routinely brings felony falsification of business records charges.

The hush money case made Trump the first U.S. president – sitting or former – to be charged with a crime and also the first to be convicted.

Since the verdict, his lawyers have made two unsuccessful attempts to have the case tossed.

Merchan previously rejected their argument that the U.S. Supreme Court’s July decision in a separate criminal case against Trump that presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts meant the hush money case must be dismissed. Merchan ruled that the hush money case concerned Trump’s personal conduct.

After Trump won the November election, his lawyers argued that having the case hang over him while serving as president would impede his ability to govern. Merchan denied that bid, writing that overturning the jury’s verdict would be an affront to the rule of law.