New York’s highest court on Thursday rejected President-elect Donald Trump’s bid to halt his Friday sentencing, and prosecutors are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to do the same.
In a brief letter to Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, the clerk of the New York Court of Appeals said his proposed order to stay Trump’s sentencing had been reviewed by a judge “who declined to sign the order.”
The denial was the third such denial for Trump this week, but he still has a motion to block the proceedings pending before the Supreme Court.
In a filing Thursday, prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office urged the conservative Supreme Court, which includes three Trump nominees, to allow the proceedings to proceed.
Trump wants to “take the extraordinary step of intervening in a pending state criminal case to prevent the scheduled sentencing from taking place – before the final sentence has been handed down by the court and before any immediate appellate review of the suspect’s conviction.” There is no basis for such intervention,” the prosecutor’s filing said.
In a filing Wednesday, Trump’s lawyers argued that the Supreme Court should halt his felony conviction for falsifying business records to “prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency and the operations of the federal government.”
They argue that the case should not proceed further because Trump’s actions were protected by presidential immunity, as he was president at the time of the reimbursements in question.
The district attorney’s office is upholding Trump’s conduct in the case — in which he was accused of falsifying records to cover up his personal attorney’s hush money payment to a porn star in the final days of the 2016 presidential election — that had with “unofficial acts” that did not fall under presidential immunity.
Trump had denied actress Stormy Daniels’ account of the sexual encounter the two had. He has also tried to delay the sentencing, arguing that it should not proceed because he is already protected by presidential immunity given his status as president-elect.
The judge presiding over the case, Juan Merchan, denied his request for a stay on Monday, and the New York State Appellate Division, a mid-level appeals court, denied Trump’s bid to halt the sentencing on Tuesday.
Merchan wrote in a decision last week that he plans to sentence Trump to an unconditional discharge, a type of punishment that would uphold the conviction but carry no other penalties.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
