Appeals court rejects Trump’s latest attempt to call off sentencing in his felony conviction

Then-candidate Donald Trump appears in a Manhattan criminal court in May shortly before he was convicted of falsifying business records related to hush money payments during his first presidential campaign. A New York appeals court judge on Tuesday denied President-elect Donald Trump’s latest bid to delay this week’s sentencing for his felony conviction. In a one-sentence ruling following an emergency hearing, Judge Ellen Gesmer denied Trump’s request for an immediate order that would spare him from being sentenced while he appeals Judge Juan M. Merchan’s decision last week to uphold the historic verdict against Trump for falsifying records related to his hush money payment to a porn actor. He said giving Trump what’s known as an unconditional discharge — closing the case without jail time, a fine or probation — “appears to be the most viable solution.” In his filing Tuesday, Blanche argued that Merchan’s interpretation of presidential immunity was wrong and that it should extend to a president-elect during “the complex, sensitive process of presidential transition.” “It is unconstitutional to conduct a criminal sentencing of the president-elect during a presidential transition, and doing so threatens to disrupt that transition and undermine the incoming president’s ability to effectively wield the executive power of the United States,” Blanche wrote. Manhattan prosecutors have pushed for sentencing to proceed as scheduled, “given the strong public interest in prompt prosecution and the finality of criminal proceedings.” Trump was convicted last May on charges involving a scheme to hide a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in the last weeks of Trump’s 2016 campaign to keep her from publicizing claims she’d had sex with him years earlier.