Donald Trump failed on Tuesday to persuade a New York appeals court to block his Friday sentencing in the Manhattan hush money case.
Trump sent his personal attorney Todd Blanche, who is slated to become deputy attorney general of the Justice Department in a few weeks, to an intermediate New York state appeals court in Manhattan to try to stave off sentencing.
But in a 30-minute emergency hearing, Blanche struggled to make any headway with Judge Ellen Gesmer.
At the core of Blanche’s argument lay two points: that the Supreme Court had ruled that Trump was immune over the summer, and that holding sentencing on Friday would unduly inconvenience him as he prepares for the presidency.
Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the spring trial in which a jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, had earlier blocked several Trump attempts to dismiss the case. Those included arguments on a variety of tacks, but after the Supreme Court held in July that presidents cannot be prosecuted for the vast majority of official acts, he and his attorneys repeatedly tried to persuade Merchan that it applied to the hush money case.
At arguments on Tuesday, Gesmer repeatedly asked Blanche about his arguments around immunity: Did he have “any support for a notion that presidential immunity extends to president-elects?”
Blanche conceded: “no,” before adding that there had “never been a case like this before.
Gesmer emphasized to Blanche that she did not accept his arguments that some evidence introduced at trial having to do with conversations with White House officials were enough to constitute official acts under the Supreme Court’s ruling. “I am dealing with alleged immunity of a president-elect,” she said at one point, distinguishing that from the immunity conferred to a sitting president.
The Trump attorney also tried to throw various hypotheticals at Gesmer. Trump, he said could be in prison until 12:01 PM on Jan. 20, at which point he would become President, and then depart. Trump could be blocked from preparing for the presidency by spending the rest of the transition incarcerated, Blanche said.
Gesmer told Blanche that she did not find the hypotheticals “very helpful.”
At the end of the day, she said, Trump had chosen to delay sentencing until the last minute. The proceeding was initially scheduled for July, and then delayed into September, November and, finally, to Jan. 10.
“This proceeding could be concluded before his inauguration,” she remarked.
Around 30 minutes after oral arguments concluded, Gesmer issued a ruling denying Trump’s motion for a stay.
It leaves the former and future president with few options. Gesmer set reply deadlines to her order on Jan. 21; Trump could file further motions at the New York State Court of Appeals, or even ask for the Supreme Court to intervene.
But it’s far from clear that any of those motions would lead anywhere. As of this writing, sentencing is still on for Friday.
