The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a long-shot bid by Missouri to block the sentencing of former President Donald Trump in his New York hush money case.
A Manhattan jury convicted Trump on all 34 felony charges in the case in May, and a judge set sentencing for Sept. 18. But last month, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey — a Republican and Trump ally — filed an unusual set of motions at the Supreme Court asking the justices to postpone the sentencing until after the November election and to lift the gag order the judge imposed in the case.
Missouri’s bid was styled as a lawsuit against New York. Under the Constitution, the Supreme Court has the power to hear disputes between states without those disputes going through lower courts.
Missouri claimed that the hush money prosecution violated the rights of the state’s voters by preventing them from “fully engaging with and hearing from a major-party Presidential candidate in the run up to the November election.” New York responded that Missouri’s bid consisted of “generalized and speculative grievances” and was legally defective.
In a one-page order, the justices denied Missouri’s request without explanation. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito indicated they would have allowed Missouri to file a formal complaint with the high court, “but would not grant other relief,” the court’s order said.
Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star in the final days of the 2016 presidential contest. He faces up to four years in prison, though some legal experts say a lesser sentence, like a fine or probation, is more likely.
Bailey has argued that the prosecution of Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was a political vendetta aimed at knocking Trump out of the 2024 presidential race.
“It’s disappointing that the Supreme Court refused to exercise its constitutional responsibility to resolve state v. state disputes,” Bailey said in a statement posted Monday on X.
Bailey is locked in a Republican primary for state attorney general against challenger Will Scharf, a lawyer who has worked for Trump. The primary election is Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Bragg declined to comment.
Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial, pared back the gag order in June, allowing Trump to criticize witnesses and the jurors in the case. However, the judge has refused Trump’s requests to lift the restrictions in their entirety and has left the former president barred from public comments on the prosecutors and court staff. Last week, an appeals panel also turned down Trump’s bid to end the order altogether.
Four other states with hard-line GOP attorneys general — Alaska, Florida, Iowa and Montana — backed Missouri’s request at the high court.
The Supreme Court’s order turning down Missouri’s legal Hail Mary was similar to one the high court issued in December 2020 turning down an effort by Texas and other Republican-led states to challenge election procedures in Democratic-led states. That effort, too, was styled as a lawsuit between states brought directly in the Supreme Court. As they did in the Missouri case, Thomas and Alito also said then that they would have allowed Texas to file its lawsuit but would not have granted other relief.
In the 2020 ruling, the justices provided more insight into their rationale than they did in the latest decision. “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the court said in its order, which was seen as the last straw in the legal campaign by Trump and his allies to challenge President Joe Biden’s victory.
