SCOTUS allows Trump hush-money sentencing to proceed on Friday

• The US Supreme Court on Thursday rejected Trump's request to block his NY hush-money sentencing.
• The decision means Trump must attend sentencing Friday morning, though he can do so by video.
• Prosecutors said Thursday that they will not seek jail, fines, or probation at sentencing.

The US Supreme Court on Thursday rejected President-elect Donald Trump's last-ditch effort to block his New York hush-money sentencing, which now remains set for 9:30 a.m. on Friday.

The high court's decision means Trump must attend or face a potential bench warrant for his arrest just 10 days before Inauguration Day.

Four conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito, Neil M. Gorsuch, and Brett M. Kavanaugh — had sided with Trump.

Two conservatives on the panel — Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett — broke ranks and supported Manhattan prosecutors.

In their one-page order, the five-judge majority gave two reasons for rejecting Trump's attempt to halt the sentencing.

"First, the alleged evidentiary violations at President-Elect Trump's state-court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal," meaning post-sentencing, they wrote.

"Second, the burden that sentencing will impose on the President-Elect's responsibilities is relatively insubstantial," they wrote, given that Trump faces a no-punishment sentence and can attend the hearing virtually.

Trump's lawyers last week asked that he be allowed to attend by video, a request approved by his trial judge, state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg did not oppose Trump attending virtually and said Thursday that his office would not seek jail, fines, or probation at what will likely be a very brief hearing.

Under New York sentencing guidelines, Trump had faced as little as zero jail time and as much as four years in prison for his May 30 conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

A Manhattan jury found he altered Trump Organization invoices and other records throughout his first year in office to retroactively hide a $130,000 hush money payment that silenced porn actress Stormy Daniels eleven days before the 2016 election.

"Every legal scholar stated, unequivocally, that this is a case that should never have been brought," Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday night.

"There was no case against me," he added. "This was nothing other than Weaponization of our Justice System against a Political Opponent. It's called Lawfare, and nothing like this has ever happened in the United States of America, and it should never be allowed to happen again."

Speaking minutes after the SCOTUS order from Mar-a-Lago, Trump promised to appeal his conviction and repeated that the prosecution is an "attack on a political opponent."

"That's much more important than tomorrow," he said of his planned appeal.

Trump had fought hard to avoid sentencing, despite facing little inconvenience or penalty beyond some potential issues with his New Jersey liquor licenses.

Over the past week, his lawyers had argued in four courthouses — in Manhattan, Albany, and Washington, DC — that any invocation of presidential immunity automatically entitles Trump to a stay pending appeal, even before he is sworn in.

In their opposition filings, Manhattan prosecutors scoffed at the idea that "president-elect immunity" exists. The US Supreme Court's landmark July 1 opinion granted presidents broad immunity from prosecution, but made no mention of immunity before swearing in, lawyers for Bragg said.

"Defendant's novel invocation of President-elect immunity does not warrant his Court's premature intervention" in an ongoing state criminal case, Bragg told the high court in papers filed Thursday morning.

Defense lawyers have promised to file a post-sentencing appeal of the conviction, with SCOTUS if necessary, given what they say were violations of Trump's constitutional rights before and during the trial.

In their primary example, they say grand jurors and trial jurors in the hush-money case improperly heard evidence that includes acts Trump took in his official role as president, which prosecutors are now barred from using.

That official-act evidence, all from 2018, includes tweets Trump sent, a federal form he signed, and a conversation he had in the Oval Office with Hope Hicks, then his communications director.

Prosecutors and the trial judge, Merchan, have argued that even if this was official-act evidence, it was a "harmless error" to share it with jurors, given the other overwhelming proof of guilt.