Donald Trump can be sentenced on Friday in a quiet money case, says the Supreme Court in the 5-4 verdict

CNN
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President-elect Donald Trump may be sentenced Friday in his New York hush money case, the Supreme Court said in a 5-4 ruling.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected Trump’s emergency request to delay the case, setting the stage for him to be sentenced just days before he is inaugurated on January 20 for a second term.

Four conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — said they would have granted Trump’s request. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberals in opposing Trump.

Judge Juan Merchan, the New York judge overseeing Trump’s trial, had ordered sentencing in the case on Friday morning, but has signaled that Trump will face neither penalties nor prison time.

The sentencing is scheduled for Friday at 9:30 a.m

In a brief one-paragraph statement, the court said some of Trump’s concerns could be addressed “in the ordinary course of appeals.” The court also reasoned that the burden the sentencing would place on Trump’s liability is “relatively insubstantial” in light of the trial court’s stated intent to impose no penalty.

The president-elect’s request to the US Supreme Court was an extraordinary appeal because judges rarely dive into a state criminal case until all state court appeals have been completely exhausted. Trump’s underlying challenge to his conviction is still pending, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg argued that the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction to even consider the emergency request to delay sentencing.

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

The president-elect, who will be inaugurated in less than two weeks, is fighting his conviction, saying it must be thrown out because a conservative Supreme Court majority ruled in July that former presidents are entitled to broad immunity for official acts.

Part of Trump’s argument was that his trial included evidence involving official acts from his time in office that, under the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, would normally be barred from reaching a jury. Prosecutors responded that those concerns could be hashed out on appeal.

Merchan rejected that argument in December, ruling that the evidence presented by the Manhattan district attorney’s office was unrelated to Trump’s official conduct as president.

Trump’s lawyers told the Supreme Court that having to deal with the sentencing would distract from his transition to power and potentially endanger national security.

“Defending criminal cases at any stage — especially, as here, defending a criminal conviction — is uniquely stressful and burdensome for a criminal defendant,” Trump’s lawyers told the high court.

“President Trump is currently engaged in the most crucial and sensitive tasks of preparing to assume executive power in less than two weeks, all of which are critical to the national security and vital interests of the United States,” they wrote.

New York prosecutors scoffed at that argument in their own filing Thursday.

“There is a compelling public interest in proceeding to sentencing,” Bragg told the Supreme Court. “Defendant has provided no record support for his contention that his duties as President-elect prevent him from practically participating in a sentencing proceeding that is unlikely to last more than an hour.”

In a final filing Thursday, Trump argued that the case involved concerns of “great national importance” and that “the constitutional fabric and the nation” would be “irreparably harmed by allowing the sentencing to go forward.”

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, found itself embroiled in another ethics controversy after Trump and Alito spoke by phone this week, just before Trump’s appeal was filed.

Key congressional Democrats on Thursday called on Alito to recuse himself from the sentencing hearing, citing the judge’s phone call with the president-elect to discuss one of his former aides working for the incoming administration.

“Judge Alito’s decision to have a personal phone call with President Trump — who obviously has an active and deeply personal issue before the court — makes it clear that he fundamentally misunderstands the basic requirements of judicial ethics or, more likely, believes that he is elevated over the courts. ethics in general,” said Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin.

Judges can decide for themselves whether rejection is justified, and it is rare for them to do so.

Alito said the sentencing dispute was not discussed in their conversation. The two also did not discuss “any other case that is pending or may come in the future before the Supreme Court or any prior Supreme Court decisions involving the president-elect,” Alito said in a statement Wednesday.

This story has been updated with further developments.