President-elect Donald J. Trump has signaled that he plans to mount a full-scale legal offensive to stave off his criminal sentencing in New York, seeking a last-minute reprieve before becoming the first president who is a convicted felon.
With the sentencing scheduled for Friday, just 10 days before the presidential inauguration, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have implored the judge overseeing his case to postpone the proceeding, according to a court filing unsealed on Monday.
Although that request is most likely doomed — the judge, Juan M. Merchan, was the one who scheduled the sentencing — Mr. Trump’s lawyers disclosed in the filing that they planned to escalate their effort. If the judge does not pause the sentencing by 2 p.m. on Monday, the filing said, Mr. Trump will “seek an emergency appellate review.”
Hoping to persuade a New York appeals court to intervene, Mr. Trump’s lawyers plan to file a civil action against Justice Merchan and seek to freeze the sentencing, according to the filing. It is unclear when they will file that action with the appellate court, but it could come as soon as Monday.
Even though Justice Merchan has signaled that he will spare the former and future president any substantive punishment, Mr. Trump is scrambling to avoid the symbolic blow of sentencing. Once Mr. Trump is sentenced for the 34-count conviction, he will formally become a felon.
In the filing to Justice Merchan unsealed on Monday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that the sentencing would also become a distraction from his presidential duties.
“This court’s decision to schedule a sentencing hearing on Jan. 10, 2025, at the apex of presidential transition and 10 days before President Trump assumes office, necessitates that President Trump will be forced to continue to defend his criminal case while he is in office,” his lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, wrote.
In the same filing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers indicated that they also planned to challenge Justice Merchan’s decision last month to uphold the conviction. In preserving a jury’s verdict from May, the judge rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that a recent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity had nullified his conviction for falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers said they planned to both appeal Justice Merchan’s rulings and file an action against him as a so-called Article 78 petition, a special proceeding used to challenge decisions made by New York State agencies and judges. In essence, the president-elect would bring a civil case against the judge to unwind his recent decisions to uphold the conviction and schedule the sentencing.
The appellate court could act fast. An appellate judge could rule on the petitions as soon as Monday, deciding either to grant or deny an interim stay of the sentencing. While ordinarily that judge’s ruling would only be temporary — a full panel of appellate judges is supposed evaluate Mr. Trump’s claims in the coming weeks — the case against the president-elect is running out of time.
Once Mr. Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20, the proceedings might grind to a halt, potentially making any additional rulings moot. Under a longstanding Justice Department policy, sitting presidents cannot face federal prosecution, and although the New York case was brought in state court, not federal, it will most likely follow that precedent.
A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Mr. Trump, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Trump declared that his legal team was moving “to stop the unlawful sentencing in the Manhattan D.A.’s Witch Hunt.” The spokesman, Steven Cheung, added that: “The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the state constitution of New York, and other established legal precedent mandate that this meritless hoax be immediately dismissed.”
