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‘All Eyes on SCOTUS’ After Trump Loses Sentencing Bid at Top NY Court
The clock is running out on Donald Trump’s efforts in the New York judicial system to delay criminal sentencing, as a judge in the state’s highest court rejected his motion Thursday morning. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of business fraud stemming from his “hush money” case. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declared the convictions were for “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal his illegal scheme to corrupt the 2016 election.
Trump’s last hope appears to be for the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, a request he made Wednesday. Some experts have suggested the Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction in the case—an argument Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is now making.
On Thursday morning, a judge at New York’s Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, denied Trump’s motion to delay sentencing, which is slated for Friday morning.
READ MORE: Trump Blames Wildfires on ‘Biden/Newscum Duo’ in Multiple Attacks as Californians Lose All
“Three levels of New York courts have now rejected Donald Trump’s efforts to delay tomorrow’s criminal sentencing,” Courthouse News’ Erik Uebelacker reported. “All eyes are now on the U.S. Supreme Court,”
A judge in New York’s high court DECLINED to sign Donald Trump’s order to delay tomorrow’s sentencing.
All eyes are now on the U.S. Supreme Court. https://t.co/KRXLrDTmTR pic.twitter.com/aLle9hfU7u
— Erik Uebelacker (@Uebey) January 9, 2025
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, responding almost immediately to Trump’s request to delay sentencing, ordered Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to respond to the President-elect’s motion.
Bragg’s response is damning.
“Defendant now asks this Court to take the extraordinary step of intervening in a pending state criminal trial to prevent the scheduled sentencing from taking place—before final judgment has been entered by the trial court, and before any direct appellate review of defendant’s conviction. There is no basis for such intervention,” Bragg writes.
Citing federal statute, Bragg states the U.S. Supreme Court “lacks jurisdiction over a state court’s management of an ongoing criminal trial when defendant has not exhausted his state-law remedies,” and there has been no final judgment rendered.
He also states that Trump “has not satisfied the stringent standards necessary to support the ‘extraordinary remedy’ of a stay.”
READ MORE: DOJ to Release Special Counsel’s J6 Report on Trump, His Lawyers Expected to Object: Report
Trump’s “assertion that any invocation of presidential immunity automatically entitles him to a stay pending appeal is incorrect; this Court must instead consider whether a stay is appropriate for the particular claims of immunity that defendant has raised.”
Bragg continues to hammer away at Trump’s arguments.
The “defendant claims that his recent election as President immediately entitled him to the same immunity from prosecution as the sitting President and thus exempts him from the January 10 sentencing,” Bragg writes. Trump, he says, “makes the unprecedented claim that the temporary presidential immunity he will possess in the future fully immunizes him now, weeks before he even takes the oath of office, from all state-court criminal process. This extraordinary immunity claim is unsupported by any decision from any court.” [Italics are in the original document.]
Noting that “there is only one President at a time,” Bragg adds, “Non-employees of the government do not exercise any official function that would be impaired by the conclusion of a criminal case against a private citizen for private conduct. And as this Court has repeatedly recognized, presidential immunity is strictly limited to the time of the President’s term in office.”
He also says there is a “compelling public interest” to move to sentencing, and notes that Judge Juan Merchan has already stated he will not sentence Trump to jail time.
“Now we find out if there are enough votes on SCOTUS to give Trump even more immunity than he already has,” observed Professor of Law and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance.
The question of votes comes amid news, first reported by ABC News, that on Tuesday, Trump called U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, one of the most far-right jurists on the top court, purportedly to discuss a job reference.
“We did not discuss the emergency application he filed [Wednesday], and indeed, I was not even aware at the time of our conversation that such an application would be filed,” Alito said, ABC reported. “We also did not discuss any other matter that is pending or might in the future come before the Supreme Court or any past Supreme Court decisions involving the President-elect.”
While the Supreme Court is under no obligation to respond before Trump’s sentencing Friday, it likely will.
“The Court will probably issue its order this evening,” notes The Economist’s Supreme Court reporter Steven Mazie.
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Image via Reuters
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
