On Wednesday, New York’s attorney general asked the Supreme Court to stay out of Donald Trump’s hush money criminal case. He said the nation’s highest court shouldn’t grant Missouri’s unusual request to delay his sentencing hearing and lift the gag order that was put on the former president in the case.
Earlier this month, Republican Andrew Bailey, Attorney General of Missouri, asked the Supreme Court to let him file a complaint against New York to stop Trump’s sentencing hearing in September and lift the restrictions on his speech. He did this because he thought New York was violating Missouri voters’ right to hear from presidential candidates.
In a new filing, however, New York Attorney General Letitia James told the high court that Missouri had no legal reason to ask the justices for that kind of help. She said that this “seriously undermines the integrity of the courts and risks setting a dangerous precedent that encourages a flood of similar, unmeritorious litigation.”
James said that Missouri could only get the kind of help it was asking for through her state’s courts, not the Supreme Court.
She wrote, “Letting Missouri file this suit against New York for such relief would be an unusual and dangerous way to get around former President Trump’s ongoing state court proceedings and the law that says this Court can’t review decisions made by state courts.”
James’ main point was that Missouri didn’t have the legal right (called “standing”) to file a case against her state because Bailey’s claims about the harm his residents would face without the high court’s help are “speculative.”
“The possible sentence and speech restrictions may prove no obstacle to the interests of people who want to hear from former President Trump,” James wrote. He also said that Trump’s sentencing in the case had already been pushed back to September “and may not occur” if the judge who oversaw the trial agrees with Trump’s request to overturn the verdict because the Supreme Court gave him partial immunity.
James said that Missouri’s request was just the state “ugly[ing] trying to further the personal interests of former President Trump.”
In May, a jury in Manhattan found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to paying adult film star Stormy Daniels hush money to keep her from talking about a claimed affair with Trump before the 2016 election. Trump has denied having an affair.
A limited gag order keeps Trump from talking about attorneys, court staff, and their families in public for now, at least until he is sentenced.
