New York's highest appeals court declines to block Trump's sentencing in hush money case
India TodayALBANY, N.Y: New York’s highest court on Thursday declined to block Donald Trump’s upcoming sentencing in his hush money case, leaving the U.S. Supreme Court as the president-elect’s likely last option to prevent the hearing from taking place Friday. His lawyers turned to the nation’s highest court Wednesday after New York courts refused to postpone the sentencing by Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial and conviction last May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. In a filing to the top New York court, Trump’s attorneys had said Merchan and the state’s mid-level appellate court both “erroneously failed” to stop the sentencing, arguing that the Constitution requires an automatic pause as they appeal and that the sentencing would disrupt the Republican’s presidential transition as he prepares to return to the White House on Jan. 20. Trump’s attorneys also argue that evidence used in the Manhattan trial violated last summer’s Supreme Court ruling giving Trump broad immunity from prosecution over acts he took as president.