Eyes on US Supreme Court as NY’s highest court rejects Trump’s bid to postpone sentencing in hush money case

By Nicki Brown, Jeremy Herb, Kara Scannell, Lauren del Valle and John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — New York’s highest court on Thursday rejected President-elect Donald Trump’s bid to postpone his sentencing in the hush money case, leaving the US Supreme Court as his last chance to delay Friday’s scheduled hearing.

Trump appealed to both the Supreme Court and the New York Court of Appeals to try to block state Judge Juan Merchan from imposing a sentence in the hush money case, where Trump was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

In a two-sentence letter Thursday from the Court of Appeals, Trump’s attorneys were notified that Judge Jenny Rivera denied Trump’s request.

The US Supreme Court can act at any time on Trump’s attempt to intervene and stop the sentencing, which was filed Wednesday after the New York Appellate Court, First Department, also denied Trump’s request to stay the sentencing.

The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, told the justices in a filing Thursday that the sweeping protections the Supreme Court granted Trump in July for official actions while president shouldn’t apply in this case, which involved behavior in 2016.

Trump’s “extraordinary immunity claim is unsupported by any decision from any court,” Bragg, a Democrat, told the Supreme Court. “It is axiomatic that there is only one president at a time. … And as this court has repeatedly recognized, presidential immunity is strictly limited to the time of the president’s term in office.”

If Friday’s sentencing does move forward, Merchan has already signaled that he will not impose any punishment on Trump. But the sentencing of a former president – and soon to be sitting president – would mark a symbolic but historic and unprecedented moment in US history.

Trump, who is expected to appear virtually for the sentencing, is set to be sworn in as president in less than two weeks. But the furious efforts to stop Friday’s sentencing in four separate courts underscores his desire to continue fighting against his felony conviction, as his other legal troubles have been cast aside following his November victory.

Trump was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records over payments to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to reimburse a $130,000 hush money payment made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels to keep her from speaking out about an alleged affair before the 2016 election. (Trump has denied the affair.)

Trump’s attorneys asked Merchan to toss the conviction both because of the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity and the fact that Trump is now the president-elect. Merchan rejected both of those efforts, upholding the conviction but also saying he will sentence Trump without imposing jail time or any other punishment.

Democrats call for Alito’s recusal

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday called for Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from the 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,” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin said in a statement Thursday.

Justices can decide for themselves whether recusal is warranted, and it is rare that that they do so.

Alito said that the sentencing dispute was not discussed in their conversation. Nor did the two 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.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Tierney Sneed contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.