The US Supreme Court rejected Trump's last-minute bid to delay Friday's sentencing in his hush-money criminal case.
The president-elect asked the top court to consider whether he was entitled to an automatic stay of his sentence, but the justices rejected the request 5-4.
In 2016, adult film star Stormy Daniels was convicted of falsely filing false records to disguise retaliation for a $130,000 hush money payment in legal expenses.
Justice Juan Marchan, who is overseeing the case, indicated in a recent ruling that he would not consider prison time for Trump.
Three lower New York courts rejected Trump's attempt to delay the sentencing before the Supreme Court made a final decision Thursday evening to proceed as scheduled.
The justices rejected Trump's appeal because they believed his concerns could be resolved during the appeal.
They also wrote that the burden of a sentence was “incomparable”.
Trump's lawyers also asked the Supreme Court to consider whether presidents-elect have immunity from criminal prosecution.
Prosecutors in Manhattan urged the Supreme Court to reject Trump's appeal, arguing that there was a “compelling public interest” in upholding the sentence and that there was “no basis for such interference”.
Following the jury's guilty verdict in May 2024, Trump was initially scheduled to be sentenced in July, but his lawyers successfully persuaded Justice Marchan to delay the sentence on three separate occasions.
Last week, Justice Marchan announced that sentencing would proceed to January 10, days before Trump is sworn in again as president.
Those days have seen appeals and court filings from Trump's attorneys, trying to block the sentence.
But in quick succession, the New York Court of Appeals rejected the bids.
Finally, on Wednesday, Trump's lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court to intervene.
“Court proceedings should be suspended to prevent grave injustice and damage to the institutions of the Presidency and the operations of the Federal Government,” they wrote.
The bench's 6-3 conservative majority handed Trump a major victory last year, when they ruled that US presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for performing “official acts” in office.
The decision also resulted in the loss of a federal prosecution against Trump on charges of illegally interfering in the results of the 2020 election, which he denies and has pleaded not guilty to.
But since his re-election, Trump's lawyers have tried to convince multiple judges that those presidential immunity protections should also apply to the president-elect in this Manhattan criminal case.
Manhattan prosecutors argued in their own brief to the Supreme Court that Trump's “claim of extraordinary immunity is unsupported by any court decision.”
“It is self-evident that there is only one president at a time,” prosecutors wrote.
Separately, a group of former government officials and legal scholars filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court — effectively a letter of support — asking the justices to reject Trump's “efforts to evade accountability.”