President-elect Donald Trump has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the sentence on Friday in his New York criminal hush money case.
In a document filed Wednesday morning, Trump’s lawyers said that sentencing him would hurt “the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government.” Trump has tried to stop the case by claiming presidential immunity.
“Most fundamentally, forcing President Trump to defend a criminal case and appear for a criminal sentencing hearing at the apex of the Presidential transition creates a constitutionally intolerable risk of disruption to national security and America’s vital interests,” Trump’s lawyers said.
With their application to the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers are asking the country’s highest court to do something that has never been done before: get involved in the ongoing criminal case of a former president. By doing this, they want the court to throw out his conviction less than two weeks before he is sworn in as president, which would be a first for the court’s conservative majority.
The move came after Trump asked a New York appeals court on Tuesday to put off the sentence on January 10. The court said no.
Trump was found guilty in May of 34 felony charges of lying about business records about a hush money payment he made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to improve his chances of winning the 2016 presidential election.
Trump asked the Supreme Court to look into three things: whether he is entitled to a stay of the proceedings while he files an appeal; whether presidential immunity means that proof related to official acts cannot be used; and whether a president-elect has the same immunity as a sitting president.
If the justices agree with Trump, his argument about a president-elect’s immunity could give the president more power by briefly giving a private citizen the same immunity as a current president.
Trump’s lawyers said that the Constitution and the idea of “separation of powers” “compel the conclusion that the President-elect is completely immune from criminal process.”
In a 6-3 ruling last year, the Supreme Court expanded the scope of presidential immunity. They said that a former president is not likely to be charged with a crime for any official actions and is completely immune for actions related to his main duties. The result not only increased the president’s power, but it also changed the criminal cases that Trump was facing.
Even though the ruling was positive, Trump may not be able to persuade the justices to stop his sentencing. Most of the time, the Supreme Court doesn’t hear random interlocutory cases, not even from the president-elect.
The newly elected president could go to prison for up to four years, but New York Judge Juan Merchan has said that he plans to give Trump an unconditional discharge, which means that the conviction will not go on his record and he will not have to pay a fine or go on probation. This is to respect Trump’s transition efforts and the principle of presidential immunity.
Defense lawyers argued that sentencing still “raises the specter of other possible restrictions on liberty.”
“Indeed, every adjudication of a felony conviction results in significant collateral consequences for the defendant, regardless of whether a term of imprisonment is imposed,” Trump’s lawyers argued — despite Judge Merchan’s plan not to impose any of the restrictions on Trump.
The lawyers for Trump also said that the former president’s conviction was based on official acts, such as his social media posts while he was president and statements from close White House advisers.
In this case, Juan Merchan, the judge in New York, said that Trump’s conviction was “entirely to unofficial conduct” and “poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch.”
“This appeal will ultimately result in the dismissal of the District Attorney’s politically motivated prosecution that was flawed from the very beginning, centered around the wrongful actions and false claims of a disgraced, disbarred serial-liar former attorney, violated President Trump’s due process rights, and had no merit,” Trump’s filing to the Supreme Court said.
