Trump Asks Supreme Court to Block Sentencing—What’s at Stake for the Nation 

United States: President-elect Donald Trump is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his sentencing, which is set for this Friday, in his New York criminal case involving hush money payments. 

In a legal filing on Wednesday, Trump’s defense team argued that going forward with the sentencing could harm “the institution of the Presidency” and affect how the federal government operates. Trump has also tried to block the case, claiming presidential immunity. 

‘Above all, compelling President Trump to argue a criminal matter and attend a criminal sentencing hearing at the high point of the transition of power poses a constitutional ‘impermissible danger’ to nation security and US interests’, trump’s attorneys argued. 

As reported by the abc news, the Supreme Court has demanded a response from the prosecutors in New York by Thursday at 10 a.m., Eastern Time. 

When contacted, the Manhattan district attorney’s office told that it would respond in court papers only. 

In filing these applications to the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers have sought the country’s highest court to intervene with a never-before-seen docketing of a post criminal trial and conviction of a former president whose appointment of three justices made the court’s right-wing more permanent — to dismiss his criminal conviction within two weeks to his inauguration. 

This was after a New York appeals court on Tuesday rejected Trump’s bid to postpone the Jan. 10 sentencing. 

Trump was convicted in May on 34 felonies for conspiring to violate campaign finance laws by paying USD 130,000 to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress, to keep quiet about their affair in the days before the election. 

Trump sought the Supreme Court’s permission to ask whether he has a right to a stay of the proceedings while appealing; whether it is unlawful to use evidence that arose from official conduct of the president; and whether a president-elect enjoys the same kind of immunity as a sitting president. 

If accepted by the justices, Trump’s argument about immunity for a president elect could arguably extend the scope of presidential power and perhaps put into a temporary private citizen the totality of immunity granted a still sitting president. 

The attorneys representing Trump asserted that the Constitution and the doctrine of the separation of powers, “demand the inference that the President elect is absolutely immune from criminal process.”