The defeat at the Supreme Court was a rare reversal for Trump’s strategy of seeking to delay his criminal cases with multiple appeals – which he used in his federal cases to buy time until he could use his executive authority to thwart them. Of course, for this to work he had to live up to his end of the bargain and win the election.

The court turned down Trump's last-minute bid to prevent his sentencing, scheduled for Friday in New York state court in Manhattan 10 days before his inauguration for his second term as president.

New York’s Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, also refused to stop Trump’s sentencing Thursday morning, as the president-elect went to the court after both Merchan and a New York appeals judge declined to pause it while Trump appeals two orders Merchan issued upholding the guilty verdict.