New York’s top court rejects Trump bid to delay hush-money case sentencing

Donald Trump, the president-elect, attempted to delay sentencing his criminal conviction from last year due to hush-money payments made to an adult film actress, but New York’s top court rejected it.

A judge of the New York Court of Appeals on Thursday bred a brief ruling to forbid Trump’s legal team from holding a hearing.

The US Supreme Court is now likely to be the president-elect’s last option, making Friday, just 10 days before Trump’s scheduled January 20 hearing, the last hearing scheduled for that day.

The Republican, who previously served as president from 2017 to 2021, was found guilty in late May on 34 counts of falsifying business documents related to hush-money payments made to Stormy Daniels, an adult film performer.

The payments, according to the prosecution, were intended to disseminate information that Daniels had allegedly had a sexual relationship that might have been politically incorrect. Trump eventually won that election.

He has denied that there was a relationship, and entered a not-guilty plea in the case. He became the first US president to have ever been found guilty of a crime in May.

He has continued to deny any wrongdoing and claims to be the victim of a political “witch hunt.”

Trump’s attorneys earlier this week requested that the sentencing be immediately lifted in order to stop “grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency and the federal government’s operations.”

According to them, some of the evidence in the case should not have been presented because of a ruling from the top court last year that granted presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.

Additionally, the attorneys have pushed for the dismissal of Trump’s conviction.

Trump’s request for a stay was rejected by Manhattan’s prosecutors in a Thursday morning Supreme Court filing.

Plaintiff now requests that this court intervene in a pending state criminal trial before the trial court issues a final judgment and any direct appellate review of the defendant’s conviction. There is no basis for such intervention”, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office wrote.

Justice Juan Merchan, the case’s trial judge, stated last week that he would likely grant the president-elect an unconditional discharge and was not inclined to sentence him to prison.