(© picture-alliance/AP)
President-elect Donald Trump has responded after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop his sentencing on Friday morning in his New York “hush money” case.
The nation’s highest court ruled 5-4 against Trump, with conservative Justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett siding with the liberals on the court.
While speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump responded to the ruling by saying, “I’ll do my little thing tomorrow. They can have fun with their political opponent.”
“I’m the first president and probably one of the first candidates in history that’s under attack with a gag order where I’m not allowed to speak about something,” Trump said during a meeting at Mar-a-Lago Thursday night with Republican governors. “This is a long way from finished and I respect the court’s opinion.”
Trump said he thought the court’s ruling was a “very good opinion for us,” noting that the justices “invited the appeal.”
“We’ll see how it all works out,” he said. “I think it’s going to work out well.”
But Trump reflected on the “lawfare” that he has been victim of, saying that it “was an attack on the Republican Party.”
“This was an attack on the Republican candidate who just won an election by record numbers—the highest number of Republican votes by far ever gotten, and we won all the swing states, we won the popular vote by millions of people,” he said. “They tried to stop that from happening—they tried to stop this election from happening or to bloody somebody up so badly they couldn’t win.”
Trump filed an emergency petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent his Jan. 10 sentencing, scheduled by Judge Juan Merchan, from taking place.
“The application for stay presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court is denied for, inter alia, the following reasons. First, the alleged evidentiary violations at President-Elect Trump’s state-court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal,” the order states.
“Second, the burden that sentencing will impose on the President-Elect’s responsibilities is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court’s stated intent to impose a sentence of unconditional discharge’ after a brief virtual hearing,” the court ruled.
The order also noted, “Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch, and Justice Kavanaugh would grant the application.”
It is now anticipated that Trump’s sentencing will proceed, and the president-elect will participate virtually in the hearing, set for Friday at 9:30 a.m.
Following Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation, a jury found the now-president-elect guilty of first-degree falsification of business records, and Merchan scheduled Trump’s sentencing in New York v. Trump for January 10. Trump entered a not guilty plea to all of the charges and appealed the decision, but Merchan denied his appeal last week.
In a document filed Wednesday morning, Trump’s lawyers said that sentencing him would hurt “the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government.” Trump has tried to stop the case by claiming presidential immunity.
“Most fundamentally, forcing President Trump to defend a criminal case and appear for a criminal sentencing hearing at the apex of the Presidential transition creates a constitutionally intolerable risk of disruption to national security and America’s vital interests,” Trump’s lawyers said.
The lawyers for Trump also said that the former president’s conviction was based on official acts, such as his social media posts while he was president and statements from close White House advisers.
On January 20, Trump will take the oath of office as the 47th President of the United States.
Trump has insisted that he is innocent in the case and has frequently denounced it as an instance of “lawfare” that Democrats are pushing to undermine his chances of winning the presidency in November.
