Supreme Court refuses to delay Trump's hush money sentencing - The Washington Post
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Supreme Court allows Trump’s New York criminal sentencing to go forward
By Amy Howeon Jan 9, 2025 at 8:01 pm
A divided Supreme Court on Thursday evening cleared the way for President-elect Donald Trump’s criminal sentencing to go forward on Friday morning. In a brief unsigned order issued just after 7 p.m., the justices rejected Trump’s plea to halt the sentencing proceeding in his New York hush money case, where he was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide reimbursements made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Four of the court’s conservative justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh – indicated that they would have granted Trump’s request. Trump would have needed five votes to prevail, which means that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal justices in voting to allow the sentencing to proceed.
The trial judge in New York, Juan Merchan, has indicated that he does not intend to sentence Trump to jail time, and he is allowing Trump to appear by video at Friday’s sentencing hearing. But Trump sought to have the sentencing put off. He argued that as the president-elect, he is entitled to immunity from criminal proceedings. Moreover, he added, prosecutors improperly relied on evidence of his official acts – such as his posts on the social-media platform X, then known as Twitter – to obtain his convictions.
Merchan declined to put Trump’s sentencing on hold. He contended that Trump himself was responsible for the delays in sentencing. Trump should not now be able to avoid sentencing, he wrote, by asserting that the hearing will take place too close to the inauguration. . ."
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