President-elect Trump’s emergency appeal to the United States Supreme Court to stop his hush money sentencing is an eleventh hour effort to stave off beginning his term as a convicted felon. 

The emergency petition asks America’s highest court to step in and stop Trump’s sentencing, which is scheduled for Friday. A New York appeals court rejected that same request on Tuesday, declining to overrule Judge Juan Merchan’s ruling that Trump can be sentenced notwithstanding his imminent inauguration.

The request for review reckons that it will “ultimately result in the dismissal of the District Attorney’s politically motivated prosecution that was flawed from the very beginning, centered around the wrongful actions and false claims of a disgraced, disbarred serial-liar former attorney, violated President Trump’s due process rights, and had no merit.”

The 47th president’s attorneys maintain that the Constitution compels “the conclusion that the President-elect is completely immune from criminal process.” His lawyer, Todd Blanche, argued before a New York appellate judge that the sentencing is an “extraordinary” imposition on Trump — and a “big deal.”  

Trump’s appeal asks the Nine to “enter an immediate stay of further proceedings in the New York trial court to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency and the operations of the federal government.” Judge Merchan has signaled that he will not sentence Trump to time behind bars or even probation. Yet the sentencing will formally make Trump a convicted felon, which would be a victory for the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.

Judge Merchan, though, ruled that “precedent does not provide that an individual, upon becoming President, can retroactively dismiss or vacate prior criminal acts nor does it grant blanket Presidential-elect immunity.”

Instead, the judge plans to impose an “unconditional discharge,” which under New York law means that a “sentence is imposed without imprisonment, fine or probation supervision.” Trump has argued that only a dismissal of the case and a vacating of the verdicts comports with the strictures of presidential immunity. District Attorney Alvin Bragg contends that a president-elect — like Trump — is not entitled to any species of immunity. 

It was the Supreme Court that in July, in Trump v. United States, held that official presidential acts are presumptively immune, while unofficial ones are bereft of protection. Judge Merchan determined that the holding did not help Trump in this case, because the payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, were private acts. 

Now, though, Trump is soon to assume another species of immunity — that afforded to sitting presidents. The Department of Justice, in a decision that binds federal prosecutors but not local ones like Mr. Bragg, has determined that there is a “categorical” ban on prosecuting a president while he is in office. The district attorney has pushed Judge Merchan to consider “various non-dismissal options.”

Trump’s appeal to the Supreme Court  argues that asking him “to defend a criminal case and appear for a criminal sentencing hearing at the apex of the Presidential transition creates a constitutionally intolerable risk of disruption to national security and America’s vital interests.”