'All eyes on SCOTUS' after Trump loses sentencing bid at top NY court

The clock is running out on Donald Trump’s efforts in the New York judicial system to delay criminal sentencing, as a judge in the state’s highest court rejected his motion Thursday morning. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of business fraud stemming from his “hush money” case. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declared the convictions were for “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal his illegal scheme to corrupt the 2016 election.

Trump’s last hope appears to be for the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, a request he made Wednesday. Some experts have suggested the Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction in the case—an argument Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is now making.

On Thursday morning, a judge at New York’s Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, denied Trump’s motion to delay sentencing, which is slated for Friday morning.

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“Three levels of New York courts have now rejected Donald Trump’s efforts to delay tomorrow’s criminal sentencing,” Courthouse News’ Erik Uebelacker reported. “All eyes are now on the U.S. Supreme Court."

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, responding almost immediately to Trump’s request to delay sentencing, ordered Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to respond to the President-elect’s motion.

Bragg’s response is damning.

“Defendant now asks this Court to take the extraordinary step of intervening in a pending state criminal trial to prevent the scheduled sentencing from taking place—before final judgment has been entered by the trial court, and before any direct appellate review of defendant’s conviction. There is no basis for such intervention,” Bragg writes.

Citing federal statute, Bragg states the U.S. Supreme Court “lacks jurisdiction over a state court’s management of an ongoing criminal trial when defendant has not exhausted his state-law remedies,” and there has been no final judgment rendered.

He also states that Trump “has not satisfied the stringent standards necessary to support the ‘extraordinary remedy’ of a stay.”

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Trump’s “assertion that any invocation of presidential immunity automatically entitles him to a stay pending appeal is incorrect; this Court must instead consider whether a stay is appropriate for the particular claims of immunity that defendant has raised.”

Bragg continues to hammer away at Trump’s arguments.

The “defendant claims that his recent election as President immediately entitled him to the same immunity from prosecution as the sitting President and thus exempts him from the January 10 sentencing,” Bragg writes. Trump, he says, “makes the unprecedented claim that the temporary presidential immunity he will possess in the future fully immunizes him now, weeks before he even takes the oath of office, from all state-court criminal process. This extraordinary immunity claim is unsupported by any decision from any court.” [Italics are in the original document.]

Noting that “there is only one President at a time,” Bragg adds, “Non-employees of the government do not exercise any official function that would be impaired by the conclusion of a criminal case against a private citizen for private conduct. And as this Court has repeatedly recognized, presidential immunity is strictly limited to the time of the President’s term in office.”

He also says there is a “compelling public interest” to move to sentencing, and notes that Judge Juan Merchan has already stated he will not sentence Trump to jail time.

“Now we find out if there are enough votes on SCOTUS to give Trump even more immunity than he already has,” observed Professor of Law and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance.

The question of votes comes amid news, first reported by ABC News, that on Tuesday, Trump called U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, one of the most far-right jurists on the top court, purportedly to discuss a job reference.

“We did not discuss the emergency application he filed [Wednesday], and indeed, I was not even aware at the time of our conversation that such an application would be filed,” Alito said, ABC reported. “We 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.”

While the Supreme Court is under no obligation to respond before Trump’s sentencing Friday, it likely will.

“The Court will probably issue its order this evening,” notes The Economist’s Supreme Court reporter Steven Mazie.