New York AG Asks Supreme Court to Toss Missouri’s Bid to Block Trump Sentencing, Gag Order

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Sept. 18, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James asked the U.S. Supreme Court on July 25 to dismiss Missouri’s petition that seeks to prevent former President Donald Trump’s sentencing in September after his criminal conviction.

Weeks after a Manhattan jury in late May found the 45th president guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, submitted a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. He argued that the conviction and sentencing would violate the rights of voters in his state.

Specifically, he asked the high court to grant his office permission to file a complaint against the state of New York to put a pause on the former president’s sentencing date in the criminal case, which a judge set for Sept. 18, and to lift a gag order that prohibits the former president from speaking about certain people connected to the case.

In court papers submitted last week, Ms. James argued that Missouri has no legal standing to ask the Supreme Court for that kind of relief because, in part, it “seriously undermines the integrity of the courts and risks setting a dangerous precedent that encourages a flood of similar, unmeritorious litigation.”

“Accepting Missouri’s limitless theory of standing threatens to inundate the courts with a wave of generalized grievances,” her office also wrote, adding that a person or state could sue “to enjoin any criminal sentencing or order restricting extrajudicial statements by asserting an interest in hearing from, or associating with, the criminal defendant.”

Ms. James maintains that the ongoing gag order restrictions don’t provide an obstacle and the upcoming sentencing “may not occur” if New York Justice Juan Merchan, who oversaw the trial, sets aside the Trump verdict.

In response to Missouri’s request to lift the gag order, imposed by Justice Merchan earlier this year, Ms. James’s office said that “the potential sentence and speech restrictions may prove no obstacle to the interests of people” who want to hear from the former president.

Former President Trump, her court papers say, “already can speak about all of the topics that Missouri’s declarants have attested they want to hear—including his views on the Manhattan DA, witnesses, jurors, and the trial court judge.”

Mr. Bailey, who was appointed by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson last year, said in his lawsuit that he believes the case against former President Trump is an attack on the democratic process ahead of the 2024 election and was brought to smear the former president ahead of the election.

The lawsuit alleges that New York’s actions imperil Missouri voters’ and electors’ ability to gain information to cast an informed ballot for president.

In his petition, Mr. Bailey said that the conviction likely will be overturned on appeal but that the constraints that New York put on former President Trump will “limit his ability to campaign,” adding that his state “has a strong, judicially enforceable interest in its citizens and electors being able to hear Trump’s campaigning free from any gag order or other interference imposed by the State of New York.”

The former president was nominated as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate earlier this month during the Republican National Convention, held in Milwaukee.

In the business records case, the former president had pleaded not guilty and denied a number of allegations that were made against him during the six-week-long trial. He also has vowed to appeal his conviction.