Manipulation Denied: Trump To Be Sentenced Friday

The conviction will stand. But he'll get off all the same.

Judge Juan Manuel Merchan wasn’t backing down. Trump’s lawyers wanted him to throw out sentencing of Trump claiming presidential immunity. Merchan refused. Then Todd Blanche, Trump’s main attorney, went to the NY Court of Appeals, and today, Justice Ellen Gesmer rejected the emergency stay request following brief arguments between Blanche and Manhattan district DA Steven Wu.

It took mere minutes. Wu flatly declared, "This is a claim that the president-elect is entitled to immunity, and there is no support for that. The claim is so baseless that there is no basis for any kind of stay here. There is one president at a time."

To Trump’s claim that sentencing would be disruptive to his presidential transition, Wu responded that the proceeding would be virtual and would likely take about an hour.

Trump's petition to the appeals court continued with the usual victim loud wails and whines: Trump counsel said that the appeals court needed to grant “an immediate stay of any further criminal proceedings" in the trial court to "prevent ongoing violations of the constitutional rights of President Trump and a threatened disruption of the Presidential transition, a process that directly concerns the United States of America’s national security and vital interests." Yeah, right.

Bottom lines and Payoffs

Gesmer’s ruling declared, “After consideration of the papers submitted and the extensive oral argument, movant’s application for an interim stay is denied.”

NBCNews provides a brief backgrounder:

Judge Juan Merchan had initially postponed Trump's scheduled sentencing in July of last year in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling setting a new standard for presidential immunity that month.

Merchan found in a ruling last month that Trump doesn't have immunity until he's sworn in as president. In a separate order last week, the judge directed Trump's sentencing on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to take place on Friday morning, and said he plans on giving him an unconditional discharge. That means the conviction would stand, but he would not be subjected to any punishment.

Merchan continued that, as president-elect, Trump "has no viable claim of presidential immunity from ordinary criminal process” and “is not yet engaged in any official presidential functions that would be disrupted by the sentencing.”

All the same, by stalling interminably — and by getting elected, the ultimate shield against justice — Trump is going to get off. Merchan will not declare Trump innocent in the case and the conviction will stand.

But Trump will get an unconditional discharge.

So much for the law applying equally to all.