Supreme Court Denies Trump Motion for Block Sentencing

Donald Trump continues to lose challenges regarding the sentencing hearing in the hush money case.  

Judge Merchan announced last week that Trump would be sentenced on January 10, which was Friday.  

Because Merchan had already announced that he would be issuing an unconditional discharge in the case, the Supreme Court announced that it had rejected Trump’s motion to block the sentencing, but it was not all bad news for Trump.  

Denied 

I believe the court would have taken this case if Merchan had not already announced the unconditional discharge.  

This means that Trump will still be considered a convicted felon, but there is no actual punishment associated with the sentence.  

To that point, the court ruled 5-4, "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. 

"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.” 

So, this went as I expected, with the motion falling to Sotomayor, and one of Trump’s justices crossing over with Justice Thomas, just as I had predicted.  

Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Thomas sided with the liberal justices.  

The good news for Trump is that the court stated that it would be willing to hear arguments for an appeal, which will be interesting.  

The case against Trump is garbage, which I have covered exhaustively, so I won’t rehash that, but I will once again say that if Trump claims immunity, he is going to lose.  

In response to this ruling, Trump stated, "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. 

“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."   

If I were Trump, at this point, I would probably just let this go, but I fully understand him continuing to press the issue because he wants the convicted felon label removed.  

So, expect him to press this until he completely runs out of options.