U.S. Supreme Court rejects Trump’s bid to halt sentence in NY hush-money case

January 10, 2025 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

President-elect Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court during jury deliberations in his criminal hush money trial in New York, May 30, 2024. Steven Hirsch/New York Post via AP, Pool, File

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WASHINGTON, DC — PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD Trump’s final bid to delay his New York hush-money case – and the sentencing scheduled for Friday, Jan. 10 — met with rejection on Thursday from the United States Supreme Court, the Associated Press reports. Although sharply divided, the court ruled 5-4 to allow NY State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan to impose a sentence on Trump, who a jury convicted in May, 2024, of 34 felony charges involving the cover-up of payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to guarantee her silence during his first presidential campaign in 2016.

The case, which involved an alleged affair between Trump and Daniels, was tried in the Manhattan trial courts. Trump then appealed, but the state appellate courts, and now the Supreme Court, upheld the decision green-lighting Judge Merchan’s sentencing of Trump, which is not expected to include prison time. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, joined with the court’s three liberals in rejecting his emergency motion, according to the AP; this majority of justices found his arguments can be handled as part of the regular appeals process.

Trump said he respects the high court’s order, and will pursue an appeal that the nation’s highest court might later have to revisit. The President-elect pointed out that the SCOTUS “invited the appeal and the appeal is on the bigger issue.”

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