The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an effort by Missouri’s Republican attorney general to lift a gag order and delay the sentencing of former President Donald Trump following his conviction in the New York hush money case.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey attempted to file the longshot suit against New York in early July, claiming in part that the gag order violated the First Amendment rights of voters in his state to hear Trump speak.
But the case was widely viewed as unlikely to gain traction at the Supreme Court in part because of the sweeping implications of allowing a state to intervene in a pending criminal case unfolding in a different state.
“Allowing Missouri to file this suit for such relief against New York would permit an extraordinary and dangerous end-run around former President Trump’s ongoing state court proceedings,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, argued in written briefs.
The Supreme Court rejected the suit without comment.
But conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who have previously suggested that the court is required to take such original jurisdiction cases, said they would have allowed the lawsuit itself to continue.
A Manhattan jury convicted Trump in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records tied to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. A limited gag order bars Trump from speaking publicly about prosecutors, court staff and their families at least until Trump is sentenced.
The Supreme Court has what’s known as “original jurisdiction” in cases involving one state suing another, which means the high court is the first to review the suit. Such cases are relatively rare and usually involve technical issues. In the latest original jurisdiction case resolved by the court, the justices rejected a deal last month that had been struck between three states dealing with how water is distributed from the Rio Grande.
Bailey told the Supreme Court that the gag order and looming sentencing would “unlawfully impede” the ability of the state’s electors to fulfill their role and that the court orders in New York violated the First Amendment rights of state voters to “listen to the campaign speech of a specific individual on specific topics.”
“Trump is still under a gag order, he will be under that order for at least the next two months, and New York imminently threatens to impose a sentence hindering or destroying Trump’s ability to campaign between now and November,” Missouri told the court.
The prosecution in New York, Bailey argued, was “only the latest example in an eight-year pattern of lawfare brought against Trump.”
Trump’s lawyers have already asked Judge Juan Merchan to set aside the conviction in the wake of last month’s Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity. The former president is scheduled to be sentenced next month.
CNN’s Lauren del Valle contributed to this report.
