The U.S. Supreme Court on Aug. 5 rejected a bid by the state of Missouri to delay former President Donald Trump’s sentencing date for his New York felony conviction until after the November election.
Missouri’s Republican attorney general filed a petition weeks ago to the high court arguing that the New York case infringed on the rights of voters and electors in his state ahead of the election. Trump is the Republican Party’s nominee for president in the general election.
In May, a jury found the former president guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 payment at the end of the 2016 election. Prosecutors said the payment was intended to bolster his presidential campaign during that year.
Weeks before that, Judge Juan Merchan imposed a gag order that blocked Trump from publicly commenting on witnesses, court staff, members of the jury, and other individuals connected with the trial, other than Merchan himself and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case.
Bailey also contended that the conviction will likely be overturned on appeal but that the constraints that New York put on Trump “limit his ability to campaign.”
Missouri, he said, “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,” according to the petition.
“Allowing New York’s actions to stand during this election season undermines the rights of voters and electors and serves as a dangerous precedent that any one of thousands of elected prosecutors in other states may follow in the future,” Bailey wrote. “The public interest stands firmly with Missouri and the protection of the electoral process from this type of partisan meddling.”
“Accepting Missouri’s limitless theory of standing threatens to inundate the courts with a wave of generalized grievances,” her office wrote, saying 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.”
The gag order also shouldn’t be an obstacle for the former president as he campaigns, James argued, because he “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.”
In the New York 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 the conviction.
The First Judicial Department of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York wrote that Trump’s attorney’s argument that “the conclusion of trial constitutes a change in circumstances warranting termination of the remaining Restraining Order provision is unavailing.”
“The fair administration of justice necessarily includes sentencing, which is ‘a critical stage of the criminal proceeding,’” the judges wrote.
Merchan initially set the sentencing for mid-July but pushed it back to Sept. 18.
