A former federal prosecutor built the case Thursday that Donald Trump stands to benefit from the Supreme Court’s rejection of his emergency request to bail him out of his sentencing in his New York hush-money case.
CNN’s Elie Honig made the comments while delivering his reaction to the news that hit on the eve of the president-elect’s unprecedented sentencing on his conviction for 34 felonies related to falsifying business records to facilitate payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
“You know what's maybe ironic about it? Trump actually gets a benefit by being sentenced tomorrow – which is once that sentencing is over as of tomorrow morning – then he can take his full appeals,” Honig said. “He can go up to the New York Courts of Appeals, he can go maybe to the U.S. Supreme Court and say, ‘the charge against me was unconstitutional,’ which I think it may be.”
The CNN senior legal analyst added that Trump could also argue that jurors were not properly instructed – “but if he had gotten his way, if he was not sentenced tomorrow, he would not have been able to appeal.”
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“That would have been it,” Honig told host Kaitlan Collins. “So the sentence would have sort of died in netherworld.”
He also said during his interview on “The Source” that he was surprised the 5-4 ruling was so close.
“We were one vote away from the U.S. Supreme Court preventing Donald Trump from getting sentenced by Zoom to nothing,” Honig said. “I mean, that would have damaged the Supreme Court's credibility beyond all recognition, and I think the opinion that came down, 5-4, letting the sentencing go, I think it was perfectly sound.”
Four conservative justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh – said they would have granted Trump's emergency request to block his sentencing.
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