by Misty Severi
New York District Attorney Letitia James on Wednesday urged the Supreme Court to block a lawsuit from Missouri that is attempting to stop former President Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed the lawsuit on July 3, and argued that the prosecution of Trump, along with the court’s gag orders, damaged Missourians’ right to hear him speak freely ahead of the 2024 election. The Supreme Court on Monday ordered New York to respond to the lawsuit.
James pushed the nation’s highest court to reject the effort to move the issue into its jurisdiction, claiming that the lawsuit was based on assumptions that were made in “bad faith,” according to The Hill.
“Missouri’s suit is based entirely on an ongoing criminal case between the Manhattan DA and former President Trump and does not present an actual controversy between sovereign States,” James’ office wrote in a 48-page filing. “Moreover, former President Trump has already raised, and the New York state courts are already adjudicating, the same issues Missouri seeks to raise, and Missouri’s claims are patently meritless.”
James also warned that the case could set a “dangerous precedent” that undermines the integrity of the Supreme Court.
The lawsuit requests that the Supreme Court rule that New York illegally interfered with the presidential election, and postpone any sentencing in the court case until after the election. It also seeks to have the gag orders that are still imposed on the former president removed.
The Manhattan trial forced Trump off of the campaign trail and into a courtroom for the length of the trial, and the judge imposed multiple gag orders that barred Trump from talking or posting about witnesses, the jury, and other people involved in the trial.
Trump was ultimately found guilty in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records that were related to a hush money payment that was given to former porn star Stormy Daniels.
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Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.
Photo by “D.A. Leticia James” by Thomas Good / NLN CC2.0.
