By Ann E. Marimow, Shayna Jacobs · The Washington Post (c) 2025
President-elect Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to delay his planned sentencing Fridayin his criminal hush money case, setting up a potential test of the high court’s ruling to extend broad immunity from prosecution to former presidents.
Ten days before his inauguration, Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made to an adult film actress during the 2016 election. He has tried repeatedly to postpone the sentencing, saying it will interfere with his presidential transition and inauguration, and challenging the validity of the verdict.
The trial judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, has said he does not plan to sentence Trump to jail time or probation. But the sentencing would complete the process of Trump being formally classified as a felon – the first former president or president-elect convicted of criminal wrongdoing.
Trump’s appeal to the high court comes after Merchan rejected the president-elect’s immunity claims.
In their petition late Tuesday, Trump’s attorneys told the Supreme Court that the president-elect is immune from criminal proceedings and that his sentencing should be postponed while his appeals continue to “prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency and the operations of the federal government.”
The Supreme Court asked New York state prosecutors to respond to Trump’s request by Thursday morning, which gives the justices time to act before Trump’s sentencing hearing Friday at 9:30 a.m.
The court could act at any time after the state’s response is filed. Trump would need the votes of at least five of the nine justices to postpone his sentencing.
In their filing, Trump’s attorneys repeatedly cited the Supreme Court’s decision in July to extend broad immunity to Trump and other former presidents from criminal prosecution for their official acts. The 6-3 decision along ideological lines derailed Trump’s separate prosecution in D.C. on charges of trying to subvert the 2020 election.
In that ruling, the court’s conservative majority also barred prosecutors from presenting immunized official acts as evidence. Trump’s team said that decision means New York prosecutors should not have been allowed to use evidence at trial of Trump’s actions taken while in office, including the testimony of close White House advisers.
Merchan has repeatedly ruled that the hush money case was based on personal conduct, not Trump’s official duties during his first term, and that the federal immunity doctrine does not apply. On Tuesday, a New Yorkappeals courtjudge also denied Trump’s request.
Trump’s lawyer D. John Sauer told the justices that upon Trump’s return to the White House on Jan. 20, “he will be completely immune from all criminal process, state or federal.” That immunity, he said, should be extended to the transition period while Trump “engages in the extraordinarily demanding task of preparing to assume the Executive power of the United States.”
Trump’s emergency request to the Supreme Court was submitted by a trio of lawyers the president-elect has said he intends to nominate to fill high-level Justice Department positions in his new administration: Todd Blanche as deputy attorney general, Emil Bove as principal associate deputy attorney general, and Sauer as solicitor general, the administration’s top advocate at the Supreme Court.
Trump has simultaneously asked the New York Court of Appeals to immediately halt his planned sentencing.
In his ruling last week, Merchan wrote that he plans to order an “unconditional discharge” for Trump, a designation in New York criminal courts for a non-jail and non-probation sentence that carries no other obligations.
Merchan said the current sentencing schedule was requested by Trump, who previously asked for the hearing to be postponed until after the election that Trump maintained he was expected to win. After making that request, the judge said Trump could not now credibly say that winning the election makes him immune from sentencing.
“That he would become the ‘President-elect’ and be required to assume all the responsibilities that come with the transition were entirely anticipated,” Merchan wrote.
Merchan also emphasized that Trump’s presidential immunity claims have no relevance to the hush money charges, which the judge said were unrelated to Trump’s official duties as president.
Trump’s conviction for falsifying business records stems from efforts to conceal a payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump a decade before that the president-elect denies. Prosecutors said the Daniels payment should have been reported to campaign finance regulators and was illegally concealed from them.
“Binding precedent does not provide that an individual, upon becoming President, can retroactively dismiss or vacate prior criminal acts nor does it grant blanket Presidential-elect immunity,” Merchan wrote.
A former Trump campaign adviser said Trump is determined to try to stop the sentencing – even though it will carry no real punishment, and even though his other criminal cases are all dismissed or indefinitely delayed – because he wants a clean slate.
“He doesn’t care that it appears he’s won everything,” said the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the president-elect’s mindset. “From his standpoint it doesn’t matter that there’s no criminal consequences, he wants his name cleared.”
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Jacobs reported from New York. Marianne LeVine in Washington contributed to this report.