An appeals court judge has denied Donald Trump’s last-ditch attempt to halt this week’s sentencing hearing in his hush money case.
The president-elect has fought tirelessly to return to the White House with a clean slate. However, following his latest courtroom failures to overturn his conviction and sentence, Trump is poised to become the first criminally convicted president in American history.
Following a brief hearing with Trump’s attorneys and Manhattan prosecutors on Tuesday, a New York state appellate court judge issued a one-page denial of the president-elect’s latest attempt to avoid his upcoming court appearance.
On January 10, Trump is scheduled to be sentenced by New York Justice Juan Merchan in Manhattan criminal court. The president-elect will be inaugurated ten days later, on January 20.
Merchan is expected to impose a “unconditional discharge” sentence—meaning no jail time, probation, or fines—as “the most viable solution” to preserve the jury’s verdict while allowing Trump to appeal.
Trump’s lawyers claimed that Merchan exceeded his authority by allowing a sentencing date to proceed while courts were “still grappling” with his defense that presidential “immunity” should protect him from criminal prosecution and even sentencing.
On Tuesday, the appellate judge who heard his emergency motion appeared unconvinced.
According to New York Justice Ellen Gesmer, Trump’s hush money trial does not involve presidential immunity, but rather the proposed immunity “of a president-elect.”
“Do you have any support for the notion that presidential immunity extends to a president-elect?” Gesmer questioned Trump’s criminal defense attorney, Todd Blanche.
“There has never been a case like this before,” he told me. “So no.”
Gesmer pressed Blanche to agree that the “underlying criminal conviction is about unofficial conduct” — outside the bounds of the Supreme Court’s “immunity” decision, which protects presidents from prosecution for “official” actions while in office.
The hush money case centers on Trump’s falsification of business records as part of a scheme to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose story about having sex with Trump threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump’s reimbursements to then-attorney Michael Cohen, who paid off Daniels, were incorrectly recorded in accounting records as “legal expenses.”
On May 30, a jury convicted Trump of all 34 felonies for falsifying business records.
Gesmer rejected Blanche’s comparison of Trump’s hush money case to the former president’s two federal criminal cases, which were dismissed before trial by special counsel Jack Smith.
“Justice Merchan would have been happy to hold that sentencing in July,” she said. “This proceeding could be completed before his inauguration.”